


Motivator

by LeoOtherLands



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dark Hatake Kakashi, Extremely Dubious Consent, Forced Masturbation, Genjutsu, I'm going to rip your hearts out, I'm not apologizing for this, Konoha has fallen, M/M, Mind the fucking tags people, Public Masturbation, Sex Toys, Slow To Update, commission
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2021-04-13
Packaged: 2021-04-18 05:07:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 63,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21784591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeoOtherLands/pseuds/LeoOtherLands
Summary: Konoha has fallen to the Akatsuki army, led by the brutal Hatake Kakashi. Iruka only hopes to not be noticed and to keep Naruto safe. When he is selected as the new Hokage's "Motivator," these goals become harder than he ever imagined possible.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 181
Kudos: 349
Collections: Dragons Commissions





	1. Being Chosen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kakashiforever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kakashiforever/gifts).

> This is a commission for the ever lovely Kakashiforever. You gave me a prompt and told me to let my dark heart run wild, as long as I threw some toys in there. Well... I did warn you. I hope this is somewhat acceptable, love, and that you enjoy.
> 
> On another note, the tags are for this story as a whole because I do know where this thing is going. However, I have no bleeding idea if this is non-con or dub-con, and I'm the freaking writer! So, I've tagged for both and I shall let you all decide. As I put in the tags themselves, mind the bloody tags! This is going to be dark and I'm going to make you cry. That is all. Have fun all!
> 
> You can have a sound of the thousand voices calling your name  
You can have the light of the world blind you, bath you in grace  
But I don't see so easily what you hold in your hands  
'Cause castles crumble, kingdoms fall and turn into sand
> 
> You can be an angel of mercy or give in to hate  
You can try to buy it just like it every other careless mistake  
How do you justify I'm mystified by the ways of your heart  
With a million lies the truth will rise to tear you apart  
Woah
> 
> Nothing ever feels the quite same when you are what you dreamed  
And you will never look at anything the same when you see what I see  
How we forget ourselves, lose our way from the cradle to the grave  
You can't replicate or duplicate, gotta find your own way
> 
> This ain't no cross to bury  
We are the judge and jury, we are the judge and jury
> 
> No one gets out alive, every day is do or die  
The one thing you leave behind  
Is how did you love, how did you love?  
It's not what you believe those prayers will make you bleed  
But while you're on your knees  
How did you love, how did you love?
> 
> [Shinedown - How Did You Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA1Sm3tvS0c)

People would forever say the takeover of _Konoha _was quiet, calm. Bloodless. But it still inspired fear. The silent, creeping, hunched fear that had people afraid to speak, and the streets empty, apart from a few, harried individuals with haggard expressions and fleeting, darting steps. There was no fighting, no farce of war. The conquering force entered _Konoha’s _gates to a simple reception, and the _Godaime Hokage _signed over her rights in the _Hokage _Tower.

Still, as soon as the paper was signed, while her signature was still wet on the page, our new _Hokage _had the Senju princess escorted under guard to a cell in the _Konohagkure Jōhōbu_. People muttered we were lucky. There were tales the new Lord of _Konoha _had had the _kages _of other villages he’d conquered executed in front of him and their bodies hung in the streets, in several streets at once, as a reminder to the citizens of just who now ruled them.

People wondered if he’d spared Tsunade because he wanted to marry her because he wanted to make our surrender an utter humiliation and his right to power beyond question. But, despite the whispers, there was no wedding and none of us felt lucky.

The ANBU and ROOT were disbanded, many of their members ending in cells beside Tsunade. The _jounin _were forced to wear marks, denoting their ranks, and walk the streets under watch, while the rest of us scurried about like mice, once we realized we had to go out again. Had to face the day as a conquered people.

I remember those first days, huddled in my apartment with Naruto. Listening to each new scrap of news, as it trickled in, trying to console the teary pre-_genin,_ while my own heart thudded in my chest. For the first time, I was glad I had not made _jounin_, had not exceeded in life beyond a _chunin _instructor at the Academy and part-time worker at the mission desk. Surely, they wouldn’t be interested in one teacher and a little boy, would they?

Would they?

Every day I hoped not, hoped not to be noticed by the new _nin _standing on the street corners in their black and red cloaks, with the weeping, swollen cloud on their sleeves. And for days and weeks it seemed my hopes were well founded. Naruto and I went about our business with limited interference. We were occasionally stopped and searched, but always turned loose and told to keep moving.

It wasn’t until the Academy inspection tour my hopes were dashed. We instructors were informed of it several days in advance by a hard-eyed _nin _with glasses and silver hair. He was young and looked like a scholar, but none of us dared venture a single question. His sinister cloak and flat gaze forbade it. All we could do was huddle together and shift on our feet, our near-silent words rustling around us, until the man left. Then the questions came in flurries.

What were we going to do? What would we tell the students? How would we keep them calm?

I didn’t stay to listen. There was no point. Ultimately, I knew what my fellow instructors would do. What we had to. We’d stay in our classrooms and teach our lessons, keeping our voices even and calm, so our precious young ones wouldn’t whimper too loudly. We would bow and scrape and offer whatever abstinence was demanded of us, so the new _Hokage _would come and go and pass us by with only a little scrutiny.

After all, what interest could he really have in _shinobi_ children too young and untaught to even make _genin_? If there was some protégé, maybe, but there wasn’t. Nothing but children learning to hold _shuriken_ and _kunai_. Surely, he wouldn’t care about them, wouldn’t hurt them…

The thought was left unspoken by all of us. Along with the question of what we’d do if he did. Would we fight? Sliding the door to my classroom open, seeing the pale faces of my pre-_genin,_ agitated from my frantic departure, I decided I would. I would fight. I would die, that was given, but if I let my children die, what would be the point of living?

And Naruto was in my class… My Naruto. I worried for him more than the rest, and when I brought him home that night, I sat him down and gave him strict instruction on what he’d say and do. He was terrified, but better afraid than dead. I could comfort him, but I couldn’t bring him back to life.

“Remember, Naruto,” I said, tucking his yellow hair under a knit hat, “keep yourself out of sight, if you can, and keep your head down. Stay quiet, unless spoken to, and don’t say more than you have to.”

“Alright, Iruka-_sensei,_” he said, eyes full, but face determined. Trying to fight the tears.

I pulled him against me, face pressed to the hat on his head. “Whatever happens, I’ll be there to protect you. No matter what, Naruto.” I prayed that was true. Prayed to whatever gods there might be. _Kami,_ deities, spirits, it didn’t matter what.

Things never are exactly as we expect, though. I expected a mass of guards surrounding the _Hokage _and blocking all exits to the Academy. I expected a rude disruption of my class and an integration. At the least, a humiliation.

I expected a monster.

What I saw when a red and black cloaked _nin_, with long, dark hair caught in a ponytail at his nape and deep carelines carved in his face, slid open my classroom door was a gaunt man in white robes. A man with spiky, silver hair and a face half covered with a cloth mask.

One guard and the _Hokage._

But it was enough.

The _shinobi _our conqueror had chosen to accompany him was one of the famed and feared Uchiha clan. His blazing _sharingan _made that apparent. Those eyes were worth a hundred _jounin. _They could kill with a glance.

And the man stepping into my space, the one who’d brought my village, my _Konoha_, to her knees, he looked out over my students with one gray eye and one red-black. A strange, burning _sharingan _that did not match his other eye. Yet, he was no monster. He was just… so still. Expressionless, emotionless. Detached. Disinterested.

My fingers had curled around the edge of my desk at the intrusion, so unannounced and unheralded by the confusion I’d listened for, but… But I felt their hold slacken at the sight of the man.

This was the one who had destroyed countless Hidden Villages? Who’d dismembered _kages _and butchered _shinobi _on a whim? He was so... ordinary. So casual. So bored. It was like he didn’t even want to be there. Like this was some cursorily inspection, and not some way to drill fear into a few terrified teachers and their wards.

Yet, he had a presence. When those eyes swept me, I felt my knees tremble. My legs go weak. He was _intense,_ and I felt I would fall if he looked at me again. _Oh, please, don’t notice me. Don’t notice my students, don’t notice Naruto. Be bored. Go away._

Perhaps he would have, perhaps it was all my fault, but I couldn’t help myself. Sai had always been one of my delicate ones, one of the ones I worried about and wished didn’t even have to be in the Academy or learn _ninjutsu,_ and his brother had been in ROOT. Where Shin was, alive or dead, in the _Konohagakure Jōhōbu _or somewhere else, no one knew. And here was the cause of it all in the same room. In a place that should have been safe.

Sai fainted dead away and slid out of his seat.

Visions of that dark head hitting the floor and blood pooling filled my mind, and I flashed from my position and to his side in a blurry whirl of displaced air. _Shunshin _was never easy for me, but I didn’t even think of it. _Chakra _flaring and leaking out of me, I caught the falling body before it could reach the ground. Just one minute at my desk, and the next on one knee, cradling a limp body in my arms.

Little gasps and whimpers filled the room, and I knew what I’d done, how foolish I’d been, but it was too late. I’d told myself I’d defend my children and that meant even from themselves. Closing off my _chakra,_ I stood up, holding Sai to me.

My first instinct was to step back. The _Hokage _was _right there. _Bare inches away from me, with his blank face and mitch-matched eyes. Looking _right at me. _Obviously taking me in and deciding something.

My next instinct was to drop into a bow and beg forgiveness.

I did neither.

Some internal part of me decided I would not back away from the man. Would not show fear. And Sai was stirring in my arms, whimpering and crying out. He was more important than begging. My eyes snapped down to him, and I nuzzled into his hair, holding him tighter.

“It’s alright, Sai. You’re alright.”

“Iruka-_sensei,_” he said weakly, and I pushed my nose further into his hair.

“Yes, Sai. I have you.”

It was only then I looked up, and… he was gone. Or, going. Walking away from me with a sweep of his robes and a glance over his shoulder.

When he was gone, I stumbled back and fell to my knees, limp with terror. And relief. And the _chakra _I’d expanded. I really was not strong.

_Just a _chunin,_ just a teacher,_ my mind supplied.

And maybe that was best. I was sure that was why he’d left me. I was uninteresting.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. I just didn’t know it, until the next day when Funeno Daikoku summoned me to his office. The normally jovial Academy principal was not genial when I stepped into the room, not relaxed. He was sweating behind his desk, under the burning gaze of the Uchiha who had walked beside our new _Hokage _the day before.

My body froze stock still at the sight of my mentor’s pale, damp face. The way his nostrils flared, and his eyes strove for calm. _Oh, no. Oh, please, no,_ ran through my head on a surge of unreality. The presence of the foreign _nin,_ and my being called, _only _my being called, spoke of the fact I _had _been remembered. Had been noticed and now… now.

“Funeno-_san,_” the words came out of my mouth without conscious thought. My body felt weak and my legs wobbly.

At least, as much as I could feel my body. There was the sensation it was a hundred kilometers below me. My mind had broken free from it and was sailing on a sea of dissociation I would not come down from, until I was forced to. Until I was physically grounded by a force known as Lord _Hokage _Hatake Kakashi. So, all I could do was fall back against the closed door, shaking hands pressing to the wood, while my ass pressed to them, and my wide eyes darted between Daikoku and the Uchiha. “What can I do for you, Funeno-_san?”_

_Please tell me what I’m thinking isn’t true. Please, for Naruto’s sake, tell me I’m not about to die here, in your office. Or, worse, be carted off to the Intelligence Division and the cells. No one comes out of there…_

“Iruka.” Daikoku’s voice came out like he was trying not to let his heart escape his throat. The hands laid flat on his desk were beaded with perspiration and held there in a way saying the firmness of the wood was all that kept the man from flying apart. Perhaps it was. How long had he been in the room with the red-eyed Uchiha? Had he walked in, to see those eyes floating over his desk, and expected _he _was about to die? “Iruka,” he repeated. “I’m sorry to inform you your services at the Academy are no longer needed, as of today.”

“Wh-what?” This made no sense. If I was going to be executed or arrested, what purpose did it serve to ensure I was fired first?

Daikoku swallowed hard, his face going a bit pink, a hint flushed, for what reason I couldn’t tell. “Our Lord _Hokage _has seen fit to request your services in the Tower. You’ll be working under his direct command from here on out.”

It felt like my world had spun out of control. Never mind my body felt distant, the earth seemed to have dropped out from under my feet. Just gone, while everything whirled, spinning me dizzy. I _was not _going to die. The man _had _noticed me. He wanted me… wanted me to what? “What- What could I possibly do for my _Hokage-sama?_” I queried, my voice coming to my own ears out of far places and, maybe, another time.

Daikoku flushed harder, something embarrassed and regretful, possibly sorrowful, creeping into his features, so that he had to turn his face partly away to answer. “Lord Itachi informs me there is an old tradition the _Akatsuki _hold of the _Kage _Motivator. An individual selected by the _kage _to motivate and relax them in their supreme work. Now that Lord Hatake has settled in _Konoha,_ and intends to make it the seat of his power, he has decided to reestablish the tradition, and chosen you to fill the part.”

“Motivator?” I asked the question, even as the _Akatsuki-nin _prowled forward, his unchanging, emotionless expression freezing me to the door. How could anything so beautiful be so frightful? The man had a feminine beauty and thinness, his features chiseled, and his long ponytail slung over one shoulder, to fall down over his chest. Yet, he was feline, his every movement predatory. I had no doubt he could kill me hundreds of ways before I could even react to the fact of incoming death, and his approach pulled ice from my veins.

_Oh, please. No._

_Naruto._

“You will come with me to the _Hokage _Tower. From now on, it will be your home, and you will not leave it without the Lord’s express permission and escort.”

“What… does he want me to do?” The words spilled out. I would have backpedaled, but with the door at my back, there was nowhere to go.

“As he desires.”

I stared at the _nin _with the red eyes. Eyes, it was said, could record life and play it back for their owner. And in those eyes, I saw myself. Saw myself holding Sai and the man who was now my _Hokage _hardly a breath away, with his own _sharingan _taking me in. Studying me. Deciding something.

And it clicked. Daikoku’s inability to look at me straight, while he tried to tell me why I was being let go. The words _motivate _and _relax. _The possessiveness in the Uchiha, Itachi’s, insistence I would make my home in the _Hokage _Tower.

“As he desires,” I whispered, looking at that pristine, careworn face. “I have to fuck him.”

“You will come with me.” The words were simple, unquestionable. I looked between Daikoku and the _Akatsuki-nin_, eyes still wide, shock still vibrating through my body.

“I’m sorry, Iruka.” This was soft. An apology dared in the presence of a man who could kill us both for what he could consider insult to the _Hokage-sama_.

It jerked me, tugged my eyes off the Uchiha, in his menacing robe, to the man who’d taught me and worked with me as a _genin _and teacher. What could I say? In the few moments I had before the Uchiha took my upper arm, pulled me from my frozen pose at the door, and forced me out, what words could I say? What did I want to say?

“Take care of Naruto for me. He doesn’t have anyone to look out for him.”


	2. Simple Masturbation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What can I say, all of your comments made me so happy and excited for this story I could not sleep last night! (Thanks for that, I had to work at the crack of dawn this morning.) But, at any rate, I got so excited I decided to post the next chapter! Enjoy! Do not expect the third chapter for at least a week. I only had so much written! Eeeeek!

My escort, my warden, was silent at my side. He did not touch me, after manhandling me out of Daikoku’s office, but he didn’t have to. His mere, dark presence was enough to hold me to his side. If I moved, if I strayed, he would use force. I did not think he would kill me, not when his master wanted me, but I wasn’t sure what else he might do. The last thing I wanted was Naruto to hear I’d been beaten in the streets. It would be hard enough for him to know I had been taken away from the very Academy. A place I should have been safe. A place _he _would no longer feel safe…

So, I walked beside the man with the fine features, with my head down and my lip in my teeth. My hands swinging limp and useless at my sides. All of me still tingled and felt numb, like a limb gone to sleep. It was as though my feet floated over the streets, making the walk feel short. Too short.

I… needed to… fuck… Lord Hatake Kakashi. The man who had brought my village to its knees with a piece of paper and some ink. But more than that. I didn’t just need to do it once. I was to remain at his _desire. _He was going to use me as a toy, and there was nothing I could do about it, unless…

Unless…

My downcast eyes took in the rustle of the _nin’s _black and red cloak at my side, his sleeve brushed my arm, the fabric rough and insistent, though the man wearing it did not physically touch me.

Unless…

I wanted to die.

Unless I wanted to attempt inciting the Uchiha so much he forgot his orders and took my life.

But no.

_Naruto. _

I could not just die. I could not leave him like that. I’d promised him. Promised him we’d be a family. Promised him I _wouldn’t _leave like everyone else. Even if it hurt me, I had to keep that promise in the hope of seeing him again. If there was even a slight, slender chance of getting back to him, I had to endure what was coming and _try!_

The thought had me biting down on my lip, biting, until blood burst on my tongue, like hot horror. But we were in the _Hokage _Tower suddenly, and I couldn’t give vent to the rising scream going on in my head because didn’t I know this place almost as well as I knew the Academy? Didn’t I know all of the clerical _shinobi _our conquerors had retained, and who’s looks of confusion and fear, and uncertain whispers, made me want to keep my flushing face averted? It wouldn’t be long before word spread through the Tower and _Konoha _what Umino Iruka’s duty to the _Hokage _was.

My fellow _nin’s _pity and contempt were not things I needed. I could do without them. _I _had enough of both for myself I knew I would have to deal with, using the same ruthless determination with which I trained children to be _shinobi_, knowing they were going off to war to die. Knowing I was sending them there, despite how much I loved them.

Spinning.

My mind spun with it all. Spun so fast I didn’t even know we’d reached the _Hokage’s _office, until the Uchiha, _Itachi,_ my mind offered weakly, opened the door and motioned me in. Until my feet had carried me in and he had snapped the door shut behind me, without following me. Until I was coming to a jerking halt, anchored to the carpet, face to face with a silver-haired man I’d never wanted to see again. Until he slammed me back into hard, bitter, cold reality with the force of a disinterested glance from across his desk.

Then I stood, facing him with my heart throbbing and my head ringing with the impact of coming back from out of shock and dissociation. This was Hatake Kakashi, the destroyer of a dozen Hidden Villages, the leader of a marauding army, which took and took and added to itself, spreading across the land, like a plague. This was the man I had to serve. The man I had to give my body to.

“Umino Iruka,” he said, gaze going down to his desk, as his fingers flipped through papers there.

“Yes,” I returned, and cursed myself for my voice. _Stop it, Iruka! It’s not the first time you’ve had sex! It’s not even the first time you’ve had sex with another man! _

He looked up at my choked affirmation, eyes hard with cool appraisal, expression neutral on his cloth-covered features. “Umino Iruka, son of Umino Ikkaku, and Umino Kohari, orphan, _chunin,_ non-combat class _shinobi,_ Academy instructor, part-time mission desk worker.”

My face flushed again, this time with an anger I realized the need to control. So, we both knew each other, then. That was good.

The last was sharp, cutting sarcasm, but I didn’t have time to amend it. An answer seemed to be expected. “Former Academy instructor, yes.”

To my surprise and discomfort, without looking away from me, he picked up a pen and made note of my words. “Umino Iruka, unmarried, childless.”

_Not childless! _My mind screamed, _shrieked _loud enough to drown out the pounding of my heart in my ears. But I couldn’t tell this man about Naruto. If he somehow didn’t know, I _could not _tell him. “Yes,” I responded, instead. Dizzy again. Enough where I swayed and caught myself with a clutching hand meeting wall.

My Lord _Hokage _looked down in a bored way, then back up again, mitch-matched eyes traveling over me. “You’ve been told why you were brought here?”

“Yes.” Faint. Oh, so faint.

He nodded absentmindedly. “You will come to my office every day and stay, until I dismiss you.”

“Yes.” Fainter still.

“You will start now.”

My eyes flickered up, betraying to me the fact I’d been looking at the ground. “Wh-what?” The color drained from my face by degrees, leaving me pale. I’d expected it, but reality was cold, and I was not ready. Would never be ready.

His eyes still showed no emotion. “Take off your clothes.”

_Not even in a private room, in the office. _

My vision blacked out, and I thought I would fall. I came back to myself breathing heavily, with my back to the door and my palms pressed to the wood in a repeat of my pose in Daikoku’s office, a tremble I could not hide pervading my hands.

“Did you hear me?”

The words brought my eyes full on the man behind the desk. “Yes.

“Yes, what?”

The question made no sense at first, rolling aimlessly in my addled mind, and then I realized what I’d been forgetting. Recognized this for what it was. Me. Being put in my place. “Yes, _Hokage-sama.”_

“Then get started.”

Another flash of anger burst through me, to ride alongside my fear. _This bastard! _my mind railed. _This bastard! Do not let him see you cringe! _

I pushed off the door and began doing as he’d commanded. Shedding gloves, shoes, and flak jacket, shirt and pants. Doing nothing to make the act alluring. Movements purely mechanical and systematic.

_You are _shinobi! _Fit for combat or not, you are _shinobi,_ and you will act like one, even in this! _

Finished, I stood with hands fisted at my sides, nails digging into my palms for traction. “Do you want me to take down my hair as well, _Hokage-sama?_” A little piece of sarcasm, that. Defiance wrapped in the form of a question.

_Is this what you want? To see a man stripped bare who wants nothing of you? Does it make you happy? Are you satisfied? _

His mitch-matched eyes slid over me, memorizing me from head to toe, and I wondered if he was using the _sharingan _to record the situation. Would I know if he was? Would I feel it?

Did it matter?

There was still no change in the man. Boredom overrode his every mannerism. “You can leave it up.”

And nothing else. I stood and he sat, and that was all. It took the slow crawl of several minutes for me to understand what this was. It was retaliation for my defiance. It was me being given it back. Me, being put in my place, yet again. Me, being forced to _ask _to proceed on. It made me want to grind my teeth and shake apart all at once.

_Don’t give him the pleasure of seeing how much this disgusts you… _

“What should I do?”

“The couch,” he said, indicating the piece along the wall.

My gaze flicked to it. Plush, soft, supple leather in a dark tone. The long, deep kind of furniture two could easily fit on and sink into. Heart throbbing, I walked to it, feet heavy. Feeling strangely weighted. As if they were made of lead. Once there, I stopped, eyes twitching up to the silver-haired man. I’d expected to find him just suddenly at my side, the way he’d just appeared beside me in my classroom.

But he hadn’t moved. Hadn’t gotten up or made a move to take off his clothes. He sat there with his chin in his hand. Apathetic. Languid. As though he wasn’t looking at a man he was about to fuck.

Confusion welled in me. My eyes flickered from the couch to the man, and back again. Feeling he would leave me to ask again, my lips parted to articulate my desperation, only to have the words cut off.

“I like to watch.”

I blinked, confusion only stirred, and not dissipated, by the unprompted confession. Once again, left to figure it out on my own. “To… watch… _Oh, _kami. I swayed again because this was worse. This was humiliation. He did not just want to use me, he wanted me to perform for him. To play with myself. “You- I-”

“Lie down.”

More than sitting or lying, I seemed to fall onto the couch. It was like I was pushed there by the force of him because, presenting an outward image of ennui or not, his _chakra _was like a wall. Without moving, he flexed it, and I was knocked off my feet.

_Oh _kami,_ oh hell. I’m like a bug compared to him. He could break me from across the room. _

“I’m beginning to think you’re deaf. I said, lie down.”

My hand encountered softness, as I slid it back on the couch. Softness and smoothness. It was all I could feel along every inch of my over-sensitive skin, while I brought my legs up and lay my head back. At least I could look at the ceiling and not him. It was patterned wood panels. Intricate and indecipherable.

Much of me wanted to draw my knees up, to shield myself, to hide what he wanted to see. To get lost in those whirls of design above me and forget the man whose eye might be recording what I was about to do for later review and enjoyment. But doing so might get me killed. At the very least, it would get me slapped with that powerful _chakra _again. Perhaps hard enough to do damage this time. I couldn’t let that happen.

_Naruto… _My mind ached the name, more than forming it, as I shut my eyes and eased my legs open, breathing shallow. “What do you want me to do?”

“Open your eyes.”

They snapped open on reflex, terrified of finding him above me, despite my ears telling me he was still firmly seated where he had been all along.

“Good. Now get yourself off.”

I blinked several times, trying to clear my blurred vision. It didn’t work. I wanted to be sick. How was I ever supposed to do what he asked when I didn’t feel the least bit aroused? Every part of me was screaming I was the _exact _opposite of that.

_Do not give him the pleasure… _

The thought repeated in my mind, and I reached down to find myself. Only, it was so damn hard. _I _was anything but hard and _he _was watching me with cold, blank eyes that appraised and seemed to strip me down further. Past skin and bone, to soul. It was glancing into those eyes I realized he wanted more than just the sight of me.

He wanted to tear me apart. Shred me.

And not just some _Konoha-nin _he’d spotted during an inspection.

_Me. _

Me personally. He wanted to make me feel small.

My fingers stilled in my futile efforts to elicit some form of response in myself.

_Why? _

What had I done to make him direct such malice, veiled in disinterest, at me? The only time we’d met, all I’d done was keep a fainting child from falling. Was he so heartless he would do all this because I refused to bow?

He sighed under my scrutiny. “Do you need help?” This was droll and the roll of his eyes over my lower regions made me flush.

On their own, my thighs came together, and my knees drew up. My teeth caught my lip, and I had all I could do to keep from sobbing. Somehow, I was the cause of this. I was the one who ensured Naruto was alone again. And I didn’t even know how!

“Maybe you do.” His irrepressible _chakra _suddenly rose in the room, reaching for me. Smothering me. Leaving me gasping and shuddering.

“N-no,” I whimpered.

The dark, _chakra _cloud dissipated as quickly as it came. Reducing me to gasping, yet again, now that I could draw air, and leaving me limp. Limp, oh-so-limp. The strain on my body from just those moments of crushing _chakra _making me feel I’d run kilometers. “Then let me see.”

“Y-yes.” Another whimper I despised.

“Yes, what?”

“_Ho-hokage-s-sama.”_

Nothing to do but ease my legs open again, and commence long, stroking motions in the hopes of waking _something _in me. Nothing but reach for any scrap of image of beautiful body I had seen, or half remembered moment of sex. But, oh hell, how long had it even been snice I’d had sex? Too long. Too many years. Sometime before Naruto- But, no, don’t think of that, think of-

A whine escaped my throat and a response bloomed down below my belly on a roll of heat. There was a swelling under my fingers, my too-long neglected member hardening.

But no. Not that. I didn’t want to think of that, either. Anything but that. I didn’t want to sully _that _memory with _this _moment. But… if I was responding, maybe I didn’t have to. Maybe I could just ride the feeling and not think of anything.

My teeth snapped over my lip, once more, the pain holding back tears I refused to shed. A name tingled on my tongue I _would not _speak in front of the silver-haired Hatake Kakashi.

_Don’t think of him, don’t remember… _

I stroked over my slit with an errant finger and pumped slow, but tight, with one hand, trying to think of nothing but the feel of my hand, nothing but the heat and friction of skin on skin, even as my face grew flush because he was watching me. Taking me in with a detached fascination that caught every nuance of what I did to myself. It made me want to scream the way his attention roved over my pink skin. Made me feel disgusting.

“Use your fingers.”

“What?” It was a strangled sound more than a word. My body locked up and what progress I’d made went limp in my hand.

Merciless and uncaring, the Lord of _Konoha _raised a gloved hand and mimed fucking his fingers through a hole. “I want you to use your fingers. And spread your legs more; I can hardly see what you’re doing.”

_Oh _kami,_ oh hell. _I felt the rose blush flee my skin, color draining out of me, to leave paleness and cold in its place. My scar felt corded and tight across my nose. Painful. Taunt.

Why did he have to keep making this more difficult? Keep heaping humiliation on disgrace? Wasn’t it enough he’d reduced me to a near speechless thing on his couch?

It wouldn’t be the first time I’d fingered myself, but I knew, spreading out my legs wide, with a shudder, and using two fingers to forcibly press passed my tight, resisting rim, I’d never be able to do this without thinking of something. Never be able to bring myself to orgasm riding sensation alone.

I had to… had to think of Tenzō.

My own fingers sliding in and out of me, and pictures of Tenzō were all I allowed myself to know. Tenzō stretched out under me. The both of us still young and exploring. Tenzō, with his hair still long and fanned about his head and his fingers in me, while mine held my own arousal, until it had been something else of Tenzō’s in me and I hadn’t needed anything else to give me pleasure, beyond Tenzō’s hands on my hips, guiding my rise and fall, as I rode him. Beautiful Tenzō, for whom our copulation had only been exploration and who hadn’t looked at me with the wistful love my eyes followed him with ever after. Tenzō, who had grown, cut his hair, donned an ANBU mask, and never come back. Just as so many others had never come back. Tenzō, whose name still rode my lips and whose image still permeated my mind when I handled myself in the dark, long after his bones had gone to rot and dust under the memorial stone.

_Tenzō! _

My hips bucked unconsciously, a little cry escaping me, as an orgasm I hadn’t even known I was nearing rocked through me. Hot seed coated my fingers, and with the feeling my mouth went dry. Everything stopped. Almost against my will, my gaze was pulled to the man behind the desk. His eyes flickered. The gray lazily, the black and red revolving in idle, indolent whirls. Active. Alert in a way which told me he was recording me in this intimate, vulnerable moment.

Revolted and suddenly blinded by dark spots before my eyes, the final, shredded wisps of Tenzō’s face flying past my mind’s vision, I whimpered and pulled my fingers out of myself, before bringing my knees up and curling in on myself. Curling into a fetal ball with my face turned to the backrest, where he couldn’t see the embarrassment painted on my face, or the budding tears in my eyes. Sparking like diamonds in my lashes.

I felt so used without even being touched. My most precious memories pulled from me and treated as fodder to give him pleasure. And all of that was me. I’d done that.

_Unworthy. Dirty. _The words swelled in my mind. _This is why no one ever wanted you. _

No one but Naruto, but I’d also condemned him back to loneliness, by foolishly being noticed by our new _Hokage._

As if reading my thoughts, and being summoned by them, I heard the man get up, at last. Expecting him to touch me, now that I was warmed up, and sickened by that and myself most of all, I turned over in time to discover him standing over me. He flung my clothes at me, offhandedly. “You can go. Itachi will show you the room he prepared for you.”

Humiliation. Simple humiliation. He’d wanted to hurt me, and he had, and he was throwing me out. I wanted to rage at it, but I couldn’t. I was in a state of disconnect, once again.

Thoroughly numbed, I dressed and stumbled to the door. The Uchiha was waiting for me on the other side, but before I could pass through, the Lord of _Konoha’s _voice called me back. “Umino Iruka.”

I turned my head, trembling all over. “Y-yes, _Hokage-sama?”_

“Be in my office early tomorrow.”

“Yes, _Hokage-sama._” Barely a whisper from pale lips.

The _Akatsuki-nin _motioned for me to follow, and I did, but it was like my feet were floating and my eyes saw nothing. When I was alone in my room, I buried my face in the pillows and cried myself to sleep where no one could see.


	3. Mutual Humiliation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "falls over and starts crying" Well, this took all day, but here's a chapter. I don't expect the next one until after the new year, given the last few weeks of this month will be a bit hellish with the holidays. So, here's an early gift. Enjoy!
> 
> Oh, and I usually have songs I use for my stories. I intended to to drop the lyrics when I posted the first chapter, but for got in my rush. So, if you're at all interested in some of my inspiration for this monster, I have now added the lyrics to one of the songs to the notes in first chapter.

I woke heavy and confused, in that condition of post-emotional exhaustion, which pads your brain and wearies your limbs. My groping hand reached out, searching for the warmth that was Naruto, so I could bring him to my chest, and cuddle him, but encountered nothing but cold, empty bed. My child nowhere to be found. It was this which woke me to reality and had me crying again for a whole new reason. This was the first night Naruto had had to spend alone because of me. Somewhere, he was huddled and crying, too.

Despite it, I couldn’t stay in the bed, pretending the blankets would hide me. My Lord _Hokage _had told me to be in his office, and if I wasn’t… The reminder of his thick _chakra _was heavy on me. He would come himself, or he would send someone to drag me there, and things would be worse in either case.

I disentangled myself from the bed and tottered to the bathroom, feeling groggy and gross, still sticky from the day before. The water cleared my head, to some extent, but could do nothing to wash away the reminder of what I’d done. I walked back into the main part of my room with a swell of depression making me listless and achy. Every part of me wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep, until I could forget what my life had become in the space of one night.

But I couldn’t. This wasn’t allowed me, and I knew it, and it wasn’t just because the man who owned me would tear me screaming out of my room and force me. It was because of Naruto. I had promises to keep, and I couldn’t just break and give in. I had to fight. I had to keep going forward, as long as I had life in me.

Stifling a sob in my arm, I moved into the room, to find my clothes of the day before and dress in them. Only to discover they weren’t my only option of dress. My room had been stocked with standard _shinobi _attire in my size and style.

For some time, I stood, fingering the new, obviously-unworn wardrobe. There was even a collection of hair ties. What… did it mean? What did it mean the bathroom was provisioned with everything a man could want? Why the attention to how I could want to dress? Why even the room, set for my comfort? Why not a cell?

Wouldn’t it have just been easier to lock me away, until I was wanted?

I had no answers, and lingering naked seemed foolish. Dumping my soiled clothes in the hamper, wondering if someone would come wash them, I pulled on fresh pants and shirt. I was reaching for a flak jacket when I considered what the point was in that. I’d only be shedding my clothes again, all too soon.

Grinding my teeth, I jerked the jacket off the hanger and shrugged it on. So what if I’d be reduced to shivering naked on his couch within a few minutes? I was _shinobi! Shinobi! _And he couldn’t take that away from me.

Hair brought up in a high ponytail, clothes meticulously neat, skin scented fresh with something earthen and woodsy, all there was to do was wait. Only… wait for what? Time ticked by, and I began to panic. I’d been told to be in his office early, but no one came to retrieve me. Were they… _not _going to come? I hadn’t been locked in my room; I was sure of it. Was I free to walk about? Was I expected to go to him without resistance?

Perhaps. And perhaps not. This could be a test, or a game. A no-win situation where every choice was the wrong one. Yet… I in-took a shuddering breath, and let it out, facing the door. Maybe better to be caught on my way to see him, then caught hiding or avoiding. I could throw myself on my knees and beg forgiveness, saying I was only doing as told, if I dared to try walking to the office without an escort. I would have no excuse but fear if caught in my room.

Hesitant, but determined, I grasped the handle and turned it. As I’d thought, the door hadn’t been locked. It opened easily and there was no one in the hall. Heart beating a frantic pace, I stepped out into uncertainty.

There was never a time when the _Hokage _Tower was empty, but early morning was quiet. Only a scant number of _shinobi _moved about. I encountered several, and skittered around them, but they only looked at me and went on, not attempting to stop me. Either the _Akatsuki-nin _had been told not to interfere with me in the Tower, or the sight of one, scared _Konoha-nin _was nothing to concern them. There were many who frequented the Tower, given the clerical-_nin _were still mostly composed of them.

Still, the throb of my heart had not eased by the time I opened the door to the _Hokage’s _office and stumbled in. I gasped, pulling up short in relief at having made it. My body sagged and my head fell back against the door. It didn’t even occur to me where I was or that Hatake Kakashi would be watching me, until his amused voice rang out.

“Is finding your way through the Tower so difficult, Umino Iruka, that you need to stand there in such a state?”

My head snapped up and my hands slid down the door for traction. The _Hokage _sat behind his desk with his head in his hand, lazily writing. Unconcerned, but for the dull humor in his voice.

“No, _Hokage-sama._” I took a breath. “I was not sure- I-”

His gray eye crinkled with mirth, laughing at me, and I swallowed back words of explanation. I hated being laughed at by this man. “What should I do?” I asked instead. If he was not reprimanding me for coming to his room on my own, I only wanted this over.

“What I want you to do is on the couch.” This was spoken in his normal, bored tone and my eyes flicked to the piece of furniture in question. A dildo rested on the center cushion.

_Pink,_ my mind supplied, unhelpfully. _It’s pink. Why is it pink? _

I didn’t realize my feet had carried me to the couch and I was standing over the toy, until his voice called me back. “I want you to fuck yourself with it. Or, do you not know how to use it?”

My face flashed to his, head whipping around. A flush claimed my cheeks, but this time it was rising on a swell of anger, boiling and bubbling in my chest. This man was calling me a prude because I didn’t like to perform for him. “I know how to use it, _Hokage-sama._” My voice shook, but because I was trying to hold back words dangerous to speak. My temper would get me killed.

“Then show me.”

Reddening still more, I turned away, turned back to the couch, and began removing my clothes. This time laying them in a neat, folded stack beside the couch. Part to show resolve, part to give me time to think. I _knew _how to do what he asked, but I also hadn’t used myself in that fashion in so long, what he was asking was likely to be uncomfortable, borderline painful, if not done right. If I didn’t prepare myself properly.

For that I needed… “Is there lube, _Hokage-sama?_” I asked.

He chuckled a dry sound behind me. A rummaging began, and I turned. The man brought something out of his desk and tossed it to me. I caught it on reflex. A small tube.

Lube.

Cherry flavored.

Cherry.

To go with the pink dildo.

And only after I asked. He’d been waiting around to see if I meant it. To see if I really knew what I was doing, or not. My cheeks paled, more wrath stirring in me, right alongside a creeping sickness. His calm, emotionless eyes said he was trying to shame me again. To cut me up some more.

Queasy, I turned, once more, and sat. If he was going to hurt me, there was nothing I could do to stop him, but I could do this thing he assigned me right. I could try to do it without…

_Do not let this man see you cry! _

I could do it without letting him see the frustration in me. The agony comprised of equal parts rage, quilt, and disgust. Gross. I felt gross sitting there, considering what I had to do and how I would get myself aroused enough to do it. Angry tears wanted to rise in my eyes, but I _would not _show him that. I would be calm.

Practiced.

Methodical.

I did not need to have pleasure in this, or even pretend to.

Instead, I reached for the dildo and studied it, to see what it was I had to work with. The thing was bigger than I would have liked. Curved, ribbed. With three vibration settings. Of course. He would want it on, I had no doubt. Trying to contain my breathing, keep it even, I opened the lube and applied it to my fingers and the shaft of the toy.

Then I was laying back on the couch, eyes unfocused, my head resting on the armrest, and my legs automatically opening, once again, confronted with those intricate wood panels fitted on the ceiling. I didn’t bother trying to use the dido in a hurry. I let that sit on my stomach and reached for myself instead. I _needed _to be somewhat turned on, somewhat hard, before I tired working with the toy, or I would never be relaxed enough to use it without hurting myself.

And it would be difficult enough to get anywhere near ready with those uninterested, but apprising, eyes taking in my every move.

_Oh please,_ my mind begged. _Can’t you look away for a moment? _But he wouldn’t and he wouldn’t let me close my eyes, either.

Only determination held me. Determination and a studious replay of the one _Icha, Icha _movie I had let myself see. I’d left the theater with my cheeks flaming, but that embarrassment was nothing on this, and the bright, watercolor images on the screen aided me in the now.

Slowly, reluctantly, I grew hard, and I bit my lip in an effort to bite back the tears stinging my eyes. I _did not want _to be hard for this man. I did not… But-

“I want you to tease yourself with it.”

My eyes snapped to the man, concentration broken, a sheen across my vision. But I would not let the strangled _what _that wanted to cross my lips escape. I _knew _what. Breathing out through my nostrils in a tortured huff, I knew what he meant, and I did not want to give him the satisfaction of hearing my distress.

_Fuck you, you bastard! _

Why? Why did he want to tear me apart? Why did he want to lower me so, and make me feel unclean? He could do anything, have anything, so why the need to dehumanize one, lowly Academy instructor? Had what I’d done for Sai so displeased him?

Daring a quick glance at his eyes, I thought it was something more. The man played at remoteness, but the very feel of his potent _chakra,_ the way he’d measured me holding Sai, spoke of something more. There was a reason behind his façade. He was not so petty. Yet… yet it was personal. All of this was personal, and I couldn’t conceive of why!

_Tell me what you want! _My mind shrieked, even as my fingers reached for the heft of the toy on my abdomen. _Tell me why you’re doing this! _

But he wouldn’t and I couldn’t ask. All I could do was click the dildo on the first setting and play it down over my entrance. Against my will my head rocked back in a small arch and my thighs threatened to draw together. They trembled, wanting to tense at the sudden stimulation. And I wanted to moan, but that would be… That would be utter disgrace. I _did not _want that! I was ashamed of that.

“You’re pretty when you’re sweating. All that pink, flushed skin. Stop holding back. And, if you can’t do that, then prep yourself already.”

Choking back a sob I didn’t want him to see or hear, equal parts anger and shame, I put the toy aside again and pushed my fingers into myself. And this… this was easier. Whether it was because of the stimulation loosening me, or the fact I’d done something of this yesterday, or because of the lube, it was easier. I felt myself opening, stretching to something which might receive the dildo.

Might. When I drew my fingers out, I still wasn’t sure. I was unused in so many ways. Strange that too should give me shame.

_Unwanted. Dirty. _

_Worthless. _

The refrain played in my mind, making my fingers shake when I picked up the pink dildo, drowned in the scent of cherries. Sickening. That scent… That scent meant to excite couples, meant to be provocative, only twisted my stomach to knots and made me want to cry, despite my resolve to not do so.

_Do _not _let this man see you cry! Do not! _

But it seemed I could not help it. When the toy was firmly seated in me, sudden tears sprang to my eyes because I had been right. It was too big, and I was too small, and this _was not _pleasurable, this was not pleasurable in any way. I winced and squirmed, tears squeezing out of my clenched eyes, my heels digging into the cushions at the girth of the thing filling me.

_I don’t want this! _

A whimper pushed past my lips, but it was drowned out by the sound of the _Hokage _getting up and speaking. “Are you having difficulties?”

I opened my eyes to see him over me, expression blank and droll, all at once.

_Oh _kami,_ oh hell,_ wove through my mind, but there was nothing I could do. The man crouched down by me, his eyes holding me.

“I’ll help you.”

_No, no! Don’t! _

“_Ho-hokage-sama _…” It was a croak and I hated it, but I couldn’t even move to resist when he took my shoulders and shifted my position, so I was sitting, instead of laying. Sitting with my legs spread wide and my ass nearly off the couch, so my back was mostly on the cushions and my head firmly in the backrest. All on display, and far too close to him.

I felt my eyes glistening with tears and my heart throbbing in my throat. Everywhere he touched me burned like fire, but all of those places were innocuous, and I didn’t know what to make of it. His eyes bored into me. Recording me. Hypnotizing me.

Looking into those divergent orbs, I felt myself go limp. Caught like a bird by a snake. He could have his way with me, and I couldn’t do anything. And it wasn’t even because I was caught in a _genjutsu,_ I was just… caught. Stuck.

“Put your hand on yourself.”

I just stared. Eyes wide, breathing shallow, and he sighed. Gripping my wrist in a hard squeeze, he lifted my arm and brought my hand between my legs, curling my fingers around my shaft, one at a time. All without actually touching my most delicate place. “I said to put your hand on yourself. Or, do you really need my help with that too?”

My throat was dry. I wanted to swallow, but could only stay in that awkward position, my throat bobbing, as I almost choked. “N-no.” It was a whine, but I didn’t even have the mental capacity to hate myself for it.

Those eyes…

So close to mine, those eyes rendered me blank and helpless.

_Oh please. Don’t touch me. Don’t. _

“Good.” He released my wrist, his hand tracking down to grasp the heft of the dildo rooted in me. All without touching my skin, as if he’d heard my thoughts, and, by some miracle, listened to my pleading. “Now, do it.”

Not waiting for me to comply, he drew the toy partway out of me and thrust it back into me. The shock rippled through me on a shudder. Hot and cold flashes bathed my skin and made sweat break out on my flesh. “Ngh!” The sound broke out of me. Little and needy and surprised. Color came and went in my face and my hand unconsciously tightened on myself.

His eyes dropped to that place, admired it a moment, then dragged back up to my face. “You really are deaf, aren’t you?”

Another thrust of the toy punctuated the words. I cried out, but not in pain. Squirming, panting, I looked into his divergent eyes and felt a queer, queasy, dropping lightness in the base of my stomach. Confusion swarmed, but I couldn’t hold still, and I couldn’t deny him what he wanted. Not with him so close.

_Please… _Some little part of me begged, even as my hand started moving, guiding my erection to grow uncomfortably hard. _Please. _What I was begging for I didn’t even know. But, as if in answer, the Lord of _Konoha _began fucking me with the dildo, each relentless jab eliciting a noise from me.

_Oh _kami,_ oh hell. _The words whirled through my mind, but I was too dizzy to catch them or pay them heed or grasp onto what emotion they spawned from. Too many things were happening to my body and my head didn’t know how to process them or where to turn first.

Then the toy in the _Hokage’s _skilled hand struck up against a bundle of nerves and I felt all the blood leave my face. I coughed out a sound, like I was being strangled and met his eyes, unable to look away. The man was utterly without expression, but his _sharingan _spun thoughtfully. _Tomoe _rotating in a mesmerizing way.

Dispassionate, he clicked the dildo onto the third setting, and left it where it was a moment. I jerked and moaned, then wailed, thrashing. The toy was removed almost entirely, giving me room to breathe, then the process was resumed with the angle adjusted, so every inward motion caught up against that spot.

I was reduced to whimpering, not even sure if I was touching myself anymore. It didn’t matter, I didn’t care. My body was betraying me, and _he _was looking at me. Analyzing me, absorbing me, memorizing my every line and feature. Drinking me in, and that too was personal. He was looking at _me,_ and _he _was intense, focused. Whatever thing prompted him to select me, and only me, from all of _Konoha,_ had him zeroed in on me, as though there were no one else in the world. And no one had ever looked at me like that during sex before.

As if the world were dead, but for the two of us, and they would have no one else, even if it wasn’t.

_What? Wh-what? Do you want… _

Incoherent. Flashes. There and gone, and then I was lost. Tears dragging long tails down my face, I threw my head back against the backrest as I came, clenching around the pink dildo.

The moment I sagged everything went on hold. My mind was buzzing, and I was limp, but Hatake Kakashi only hummed absently in pleasure, and removed his toy from me. He stood, stretching cramped muscles, and walked away.

Exhausted, mentally and physically, I watched him without moving. He dropped the toy on his desk unceremoniously and retrieved something else he brought to me. Movements all unhurried. He dangled a towel before my eyes. “Clean up. Then you can go.”

My hand trembled when I reached for the towel, but I made short work of the mess that was myself. I wanted out of that room and only his commanding, low, bored voice pulled me up short. “You will come in the afternoon tomorrow.”

I turned back. Sick. “Yes, _Hokage-sama.”_

And I was gone. I fled the office, my heart hammering in my chest, beating on my ribs. Eager to come out.

Had I… Had I enjoyed that?

What the hell was wrong with me?!

† † †

I was soon to find the time was worse than the answers to those questions. With nothing to do, and not enough courage to test my ability to wander the Tower unescorted, once I’d taken several showers, to try rinsing the feeling of the orgasm off me, there was nothing. Nothing but time.

Time to go round in circles on those agonizing questions, my own disgust, and my fear.

_Naruto! _

Was he safe? Was he with Daikoku? I doubted that. The boy was outcast. Even more so now, under _Akatsuki _conquest. Was Naruto at home? At the Academy? Had he eaten?

The worry had me pacing concentric rings in my limited space, pulling at my damp hair, and biting my lip, until it was time for another shower and furious scrubbing. Then, in the shower, angry tears flooded my eyes. Washed away by the water like my shame could not be. All of this was my fault. All of it. In some inexplicable way, it was all my own doing. Even my own pleasure where I should have had none. That too was only me.

_Dirty. _

Yes, yes, I was, and I couldn’t get clean or get that voice out of my head.

_Unworthy. _

_Stop it! Don’t you think I know that?! _

It took Itachi’s appearing with food to make me realize I was talking to myself in my own head. Going stir crazy after less than a full day serving Hatake Kakashi.

The man with the oddly beautiful, yet tired face, did not talk to me. He passed me a tray and departed, and I didn’t eat. I cried. Cried myself to sleep a second time, only to wake late evening with cold food and a hot, puffy face.

I showered again.

It didn’t work.

Not anymore than I could rid the disgrace from my soul, or the accusatory voice from my mind. Or the feeling of hot hands skimming down my back, while words I didn’t want to hear were whispered in my ear…

And none of that was Hatake Kakashi. It was all me, all Umino Iruka. I’d done that to myself.

When the Uchiha came again with my evening meal, I passed him my untouched tray and asked for something to help me sleep. Fuck shame. I needed it.

I got it too. A short while after making my request to the Uchiha, the silver-haired _nin_, who had alerted my fellow instructors and me to the impending inspection of the Academy, arrived, grinning, at my door with a packet in his hand.

The white power in the packet mixed with some warm water and I slept like the dead, until late morning. But I still had hours before I had to go to Kakashi. Hours I didn’t know how to fill. Hours to become lost in my own mind.

Itachi found me with my third untouched tray and my head in my hands near noon. His flawless face held danger and storm clouds. Without touching me, his pale fingers reached for my face. “Eat. You are not allowed to die.”

Death had not occurred to me. I had no intention of starving myself. I had to get back to Naruto. I just couldn’t bring myself to eat or realize the meals I’d missed. My body didn’t even feel the hunger it must be experiencing.

Perhaps my face said it better than my words, but for whatever reason, the Uchiha believed me when I told him I had no appetite, but also no plans to escape in death. He offered me a curt nod in acknowledgement, but would not leave, until I’d forced down some food in his sight.

Then, my only company gone, there was nothing but dozing and one more shower before dragging my leaden feet to my _Hokage._

I had no way of knowing what I’d open the door on.

No. No idea at all. I was too preoccupied with my own distress for that, but one step inside the door was enough to cure me of preoccupation and self-loathing together. The air was heavy. The aura of the office suffocating with the presence of a thick, angry _chakra _that nearly brought me to my knees with one breath. I doubled over, almost retching with my inability to draw usable air into my lungs, and the pure, undiluted _threat _lining the atmosphere around me. This was not killing intent, this was something more. This was… was… sheer force aimed to bend something to its will.

And yet, the most frightening thing in that iron will, was the indelible fact this deadly _chakra was not _directed at me. What I was feeling was only the aftereffect, the residual phantom image of the core thing, like the shimmering haze of brightness left on your eyes after daring a look at the sun. I felt, struggling there, the floor an unreality below my feet, if the full force of that demand to heel were directed at me, I would crumble. My heart would stop, and I would cease to exist. Umino Iruka, gone in less than a breath. Truly an insect pitted against deities.

Terrified, gasping, I raised weeping, watering eyes to take in the room, to ascertain just what it was that was going to kill me. My Lord _Hokage _reclined lazily, unaffectedly, behind his desk, his unchanging expression droll and unconcerned. A man stood over him, an Uchiha by his red, spinning _sharingan. _Old. Dignified in the way of one who has lived long and learned to expect others to do as he told them. The man’s every line was long and slender and commanding. His face was careworn in the way Itachi’s was, making me wonder, even in my state, if it were a trait of the bloodline, and gray tainted the black of his hair at the nape of his neck. The dense _chakra _cloud permeating the place leaked from him, billowing outward like a fog darkening the air.

And all of it, all of the _threat _and the _command to bow,_ was trained on my Lord _Hokage,_ Hatake Kakashi.

Dazed, I could only shake, feeling I was coming undone, but was equally unable to escape or care. I wanted to fall apart with that _chakra _mass around me. Wanted to give in and deliver whatever was demanded, if only the Uchiha would relent and _not look _at me.

But both of the _Akatsuki _turned their eyes on me. One set mitch-matched and dispassionate, despite the wall of hostility hurled at its owner, the other set an even crimson, like fire and blood and wrath. It was those eyes, those pitiless eyes, which took me in, took my measure, and dismissed me just as quickly as they noted me. “You are not wanted. Get out.”

The force of that threw me back. What air I’d been able to gather was knocked out of my lungs by the mahogany doors, when they slammed into my back. My head clicked against that heavy, inlaid wood, and I saw dark stars explode before my eyes. I thought I whimpered, but I wasn’t sure. My numb hand moved on its own to find the door handle.

Only to be pulled up short by a different command. And a soft, idle question. “Did I tell you to leave? Go sit down.”

It was a fascinating thing, that command. It cut straight through the Uchiha’s _chakra,_ to wrap around my mind and yank me into the room. As if I was a rag doll these two powerful men were using to enact their inexplicable war, I was propelled from being shoved out the door to being dropped onto the plush couch. Mind spinning, I wasn’t even sure how I’d arrived on the cushions, I only knew I was there, and I couldn’t think, couldn’t act, couldn’t breathe. Could only stare with wide, dilated eyes.

The Uchiha spared me a glance but directed his eyes and words to my _Hokage. _“You are going to allow your toy to hear?”

The silver-haired man raised absently, disinterested eyes to the raven-haired Uchiha. “I want to play when we’re done, Tajima. No point in dismissing him, only to send for him before he gets back to his room.”

“You are indolent and unwise, Kakashi. Do you really expect this to be over so soon?”

The Lord of _Konoha _nodded at the other man, offhandedly. “I expect you’ll bow to your _shogun. _Or are you forgetting I took that title from you, _daimyo-sama?”_

The threatening _chakra _in the room roiled, sparking with flickering displeasure, like lightning strikes. Pulling more, near-volumeless whines from me the Uchiha did not even acknowledge. “I have not forgotten, Kakashi. Yet, you are a fool to allow the Senju princess and the elite _Konoha shinobi _to live. You should have them butchered, as you did the elite of a dozen other villages.”

At this, a real sound, a horrified sound, came out of me. I tried to stifle it behind my hands, but I couldn’t. The thing was too tearing and too broken to hide. A rending kind of moan that wanted to be a scream, as I watched the last of my village get crushed. In those words, I could see the blood and Tsunade’s body decorating various streets.

The articulation drew the eyes of the two men to me. Both of the _Akatsuki _lords looked at me, there on the couch, shivering like a wet mutt brought in from the rain, and Hatake Kakashi sighed. His eyes traveled up the length of the Uchiha in a slow crawl. “Now look. You’ve upset my pet.”

There was a pungent silence. One in which the two men watched each other with loaded regard. A moment, a breath, a heartbeat, and the Uchiha’s eyes narrowed. “You will, as ever, follow your own willful path. Ungrateful child. I should never have adopted that brat, whose name you pollute our history with. My own mistake offends my dignity.”

That was all it took. Those singular, convoluted statements I could not wrap my head around or decipher. That. That and nothing else spurred the first real emotion out of Hatake Kakashi I had ever seen the man express. His eyes flickered and he tilted his head to the side, hand clenching the edge of his desk so hard it cracked, splintering along its surface like ice on a lake.

“It offends your dignity? _I’ll _offend your dignity, Uchiha Tajima.”

The silver-haired man stood up and brushed aside the Uchiha’s boiling _chakra,_ as if it were nothing more than a thin curtain. And, oh _kami,_ oh hell, the _chakra _he exuded in its place was worse. This was not threat, this was not command, this was raw _intent. _This was _purpose,_ and it flung Tajima several paces back, as if the man was nothing more than a _genin. _He panted in the face of my _Hokage’s _oncoming approach and raised a hand to shield his eyes, as though Hatake Kakashi radiated a light that blinded him.

I thought I would die again. My heart constricted in my chest and my muscles went limp, dropping me back against the couch’s backrest. Drawing shallow sips of air through a closed throat, all I could do was watch the one man come level with me, while the other continued to retreat from us both. My mouth made little, wordless motions, and they seemed to draw my _Hokage’s _eyes. Or… he’d had me in mind all along. It hardly mattered.

He glanced to me and then to Tajima. “I want you to get yourself off in front of him.”

“_Ho… ka… ge… sa… ma-” _Each syllable was accented with a pant, and my eyes felt as though they kept dilating and contracting. So unfocused and near the point of blacking out, I could not even process his words or unravel their meaning.

Perhaps it was this pathetic display that showed him how he was affecting me. How his unthinking use of _chakra _was choking me. With a low, humming sound, he eased off his exhibition of power and pulled me forward by my hair. “You will do what I told you.”

I moaned, my hands going to wrestle with his in my hair on reflex, my mind yet to catch up with the fact I could think and breathe again.

The Uchiha did not share my predicament. He took a step forward and cast a glance at my _Hokage. _“What stupidity are you intending, Kakashi?”

My Lord of _Konoha _did not bother giving the man a response. He only shook me, until he disentangled my hands from his, then pulled me upright and released my hair. “I will not let either of you leave, until it’s done.”

The shaking had thoroughly brought me around, literally shaking me out of my stupor, and sitting there, with my hands now gripping the couch cushion I sat on in a white-knuckled clasp, my breath coming fast and hard, my eyes darted between the man who owned me and the man with the burning, red gaze. I… was… supposed to- To- He wanted me to-

_How?! _

There was no way. No way. I could hardly manage the feat with Hatake Kakashi alone, with another in the room, with simmering, suffocating _chakra _swirling just beneath the surface of each man-

A little mewing whine was pried from my lips. A sound I should have been ashamed of but couldn’t even register in the moment.

The _Hokage _sighed again. Maybe it was my lack of color or the clear horror in my brown eyes that showed him the impossibility of what he asked. Whatever he saw in me, he wasn’t to be swayed by it. “I’ll help you.”

_Oh please. Please, no. _I had just time to think it. Just scant seconds. One of the silver-haired man’s hands went to my pants and tore them open, but it was the other hand, the hand reaching for my face with gentle, insistent fingers which worried me. _Whatever you’re going to do, please don’t. _

Begging had never earned me anything, though. Never. Not with any of my tormentors.

Those fingers touched my forehead, just to the side of my eye, and I wished I’d died, smothered by _chakra._

I was yanked out of the room and into darkness so quickly it left me reeling. Reeling and spinning and grasping at nothing. There was nothing where I found myself. Nothing. Only… I _was still _in the room. _Was still _on the couch in the _Hokage’s _office. I could _still feel _my body in some disconnected way, which allowed me _sensation _but no _motion. _No, I _still had _my body, was _still connected _to it, but I was locked in my mind. And… _he _was in my mind with me. Hatake Kakashi was shifting through my essence like it was so much rubbish to be picked up, examined, and discarded out of hand. He was peeling away layers of me that left me screaming in the mental prison he’d thrown me into, and my unmanned body was twitching and jerking spasmodically somewhere I could hardly grasp with every thrust he made into my consciousness.

Oh hell, oh _kami _it hurt. It hurt like the _shuriken _I’d taken to the back for Naruto. It hurt like the ripping tear of the _kunai _across my face, when a different silver-haired bastard felt I needed to be put in my place. It hurt like that same bastard’s tender caresses and little coos of admiration the next time he’d had me in his hands. It hurt like-

_GET OUT! _

Fighting back was natural. Fighting back was instinctual, if foolish, and out of my control. But it was also pointless. My _Hokage _swatted my efforts away with a careless swipe, as if I were nothing more than some irksome chalk residue on a blackboard, to be wiped away and forgotten. But with that casual slap, I felt my eyes roll back into my head somewhere I still had physical form, felt my body convulse and gargle something liquid in my throat.

Panic, bright and blinding, had me whimpering in my violated mind, but Hatake Kakashi did not care, did not slow. He kept sifting through what made up the essential _me _without respect, regard, or sympathy. Not so much looking for a memory, but a feeling, an emotion, and when he found it… oh _kami_, when he found what he wanted, he turned it on me with relentless, ruthless purpose.

The shell of me left under Hatake Kakashi’s hands on the couch in his office spasmed. In the darkness where he crawled through my mind, the shadows began to condense and take form. There was no real substance, or actual picture or color or definition, but… but… there was the idea, the dream-like, all-encompassing illusion…

It brushed me, hands soft on my thighs, pushing them open, prompting me back into a recline, the wash of its low words as gentle as those dreamed hands. As light and sweet as those lips, which parted to take me in and drink me down…

_No, stop! _

I struggled against the _genjutsu,_ tried every means of escape I taught my pre-_genin _at the Academy, and was found wanting. Was left in the shadows with my own most precious and desired one reduced to… to-

His tongue teased me in all the best possible ways. His mouth, all so warm and wet and tight, worshiped me, while his eyes, _those _eyes, those chocolate brown eyes I adored, looked up at me, begging acceptance. Asking if this was well-

_Tenzō! _

My Lord _Hokage _paused a moment at the name, as if caught off guard by it, but his momentary lapse was nothing more than that. The _genjutsu _pressed on, and I was left gasping and responding, both in body, oh-so-far-away, and in the trap he had me in in my mind. How could I not? Tenzō loving me, Tenzō wanting me, being kind to me…

_No! It isn’t real! _

I wailed it, trying to resist, trying to push away, but-

All I found myself doing was reaching out, stretching trembling fingers out to touch long, chestnut hair that wasn’t there, that had never been there, because Tenzō had never done this for me, never wanted this intimacy after our one time…

_T-tenzō…_

_It’s not real!_

_Tenzō… _

_Stop this!_

_I’ve missed you. _

_Get out, get out!_

_Tenzō! Tenzō!_

I realized I was going back and forth in my own mind, equal parts resisting and wanting to weep for the feel of that mouth on me, bringing me to full hardness, offering me a love I’d craved for so long, offering me my lost one from the grave. But none of it mattered. None of it. Hatake Kakashi accomplished what he wanted, raised me to arousal, then threw me back out of _genjutsu,_ fueled by my own mind and deepest wants, and into my body.

The shock of it jerked me away from his hand. Bent me double over my knees and my erection, while I coughed into my hands. Pain. Aside from the raging hard on I was left with, pain was all I felt. It tingled along every nerve and burned just under every millimeter of my skin. Oh, I ached, I ached so fucking much. And, oh hell.

“Do you require further help?”

Struggling to swallow against the copper in my throat, struggling to breathe, I found myself sitting, looking between the blood on my fingers and the remorseless, dispassionate features of Hatake Kakashi. I could feel blood on my lips, as well. It wouldn’t surprise me if the clog I felt in my nose was also blood. His _help _would kill me. “No.” It was an unstable thing, that word, clotted and thin, but there. Acknowledgement.

“Then do what I told you.”

My eyes crawled to the Uchiha. He’d watched my torture with a frown and a clenched jaw. At my dazed stare and my _Hokage’s _admonition, he took a step back. “This is sickening, Kakashi. What you choose to do with your Motivator is your concern, but do not expect me to stand and watch.”

The man turned to go, but red wards shimmered on the walls at a flex of the Lord of _Konoha’s chakra. _Shimmered, shuddered, and overspread the door, stopping the Uchiha in his tracks.

“I said I would not let either of you leave, until it was done, Tajima.”

The _Akatsuki-nin _turned again, a storm cloud darkening his features. “Willful child.” He motioned to me. “Let us have done with this.”

My hand crept between my thighs, reluctant. Blood and pre-cum an odd and macabre lubricant for the swift and efficient motions I attempted to employ. Face flushed, skin hot, I wanted to look away, but I was afraid the man who owned me would not allow it if I tried. All that saved me was the fact the Uchiha wanted this as little as I did. He wanted to see as little as I wanted to do. This was mutual humiliation and the sooner done, the sooner both of us could be free.

Still, I could not suppress a sob when it _was _done. When fresh cum covered my hand. Disgust was as rampant as fear, and it did not help Hatake Kakashi hauled me up by the collar and flung me away, like trash. My knees and hands hit the floor because I was weak from the _genjutsu _and could not catch myself.

“_Now _you can both go.”

But oh, release was sweet. I didn’t even know how I righted myself, closed my torn pants, and scrambled out the door with the Uchiha. I only knew I found myself outside the office with the red-eyed man, and then I bolted. Bolted because this was the man who wanted to kill Tsunade and my fellow _Konoha shinobi._

But… if that were true, what did that make Hatake Kakashi?


	4. An Ornament In A Full Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "falls over" Well, this honestly took me two days of my life to type and edit. Ugh! The joys of being a hand writer. Anyway, "dumps just over nine thousand words all over the place," please have another feral chapter that quite literally bit and scratched the entire time I was handling it. "face palm" You could say this is an example of what happens when Kabuto gives you nothing but trouble, Itachi shows up to save the day with randomness, and then you begin to wonder why the fuck you planned to have so many bleeding people in a room at one! "cough" Anyway... Enjoy! " picks himself up and runs away"

The clot in my nose broke open halfway back to my room. Maybe jarred from its precarious blockage by my running, maybe not. Whatever the case, I was bleeding freely, the crimson flood dripping and leaking between my fingers by the time I reached my room. Once there, I attempted to staunch it, but eventually gave up the futile effort and went to take a shower, where the water could wash away the blood, cum, and tears together.

I was still carrying a cloth to catch the random, unexpected red runnels when a knock sounded on my door. I opened it, thoughtlessly, anticipating Itachi and food I would not eat, unless he forced me, but what I found was the silver-haired _nin _with the glasses. The man’s unpleasant smile left me blank and his words made little sense to my abused mind.

“Our Lord _Hokage _sent me to ensure you were not damaged.”

I blinked at him several times, the only things holding me up, keeping me from falling face first onto the floor, a wasted, overwrought, and exhausted _chunin,_ my grip on the door handle and the hand braced on the molding. “Oh.”

The man’s smile slipped into something indecipherable. His eyes lightened a shade, as they slid over me. Assessing me down to nuances with a glance. “I am Kabuto of the Sound. I’m a medical-_nin.”_

“Oh.” That clicked. After all, he had been the one to bring my sleeping powder. “Come in,” I said, stepping out of the doorway, to allow him access without protest. It was mere courtesy he’d waited on the invitation to begin with. The fact was not lost on me, I belonged to someone else. Hatake Kakashi had made it abundantly clear. If he wanted me examined, he would have me examined.

The young man came in, eyeing everything with a quick, discerning gaze. He flicked a few of the blood-stained tissues scattered about my room with his fingertips and took in my state, yet again. Barefoot in loose clothes, with my hair down and damp, and my face pale. “Sit down on the bed,” he instructed.

I didn’t have the energy to stand or the mental capacity to resist, despite my apprehension with the man. So, I sat on the edge of my bed, still absently holding the cloth I’d been blotting my nose with. The man approached me, tugged the end of the cloth. “You’ve been bleeding.”

“Yes,” I admitted, listlessly. _That _was rather obvious. I hadn’t had time to pick up and dispose of the evidence yet.

“From where?” Kabuto raised a finger to trace the contours of my face without actually touching me.

With his hand so close, I found I really _did not _want him to make contact with my skin. There was just something about the man that made my flesh crawl. His _chakra _was low, but odd, unnatural, and… Standing as close to me as he was, I should have been able to sense some body heat, but I didn’t. It was as if he were some form of reptile. Cold-blooded. Inhuman, though he didn’t look it.

“My nose.” Despite my unease, I didn’t seem to have the focus or internal reserves to muster real feeling. Everything I said came out inflectionless.

My visitor nodded. “I’m going to examine you.”

Which was as much to say, _be prepared to have my _chakra _all over you. _Medical-_n__in _had an interesting way of saying what they didn’t mean. I’d always noted it, and thought it unnerving, rather than the reassuring I expected they intended it to be.

But, as much distaste as I had for the notion of being _examined _by the man before me, as much as the idea of his cool, creeping _chakra _invading my already brutalized body repulsed me, I had no thought of refusing. My Lord _Hokage _had sent the medic. Hatake Kakashi wanted me _undamaged. _Anything less than complete compliance would not be well for my health.

So, I let my fingers curl into the edge of the mattress, gripping it for a hold on something solid, while, for the second time in the space of hours, another’s unwanted _chakra _was inserted into me. Yet, I had to give Kabuto credit. An unwholesome individual or not, he was professional. As respectful as any _Iryō-nin _at the _Konoha Byōin,_ he let his hands glow leaf-green with healing _chakra _and skimmed them upward over my lower stomach, my chest, my back, telling me each place his _chakra _would probe before he examined it. He lingered long at my throat before moving on to my nose and face and head.

The weird, low, soft whirls of his cool _chakra _through my _Keirakukei _had almost lulled me into a kind of waking slumber, when the man spoke, asking me a direct question. “Have you lost consciousness since leaving our _Hokage’s _office?”

With my face as it was, between his hands, he had to see how taken aback I was. Part of me didn’t want to answer, too thoroughly humiliated in so many ways to want to add more upon it, but being dishonest to a medic-_nin _seemed foolhardy. “I… almost did… in the shower.” Truth be told, it might have been more than almost. I’d been weeping under the steaming water when a wave of heavy dizziness hit me. My head had spun, and my body had felt padded, weighted, and unreal. Trying hard to breathe through tears, a nose still clogged with blood, and lungs, which felt as though they’d been seared, I’d leaned into the tile wall, to hold me up, and only ended in sliding down the wall to the bottom of the shower. Where I’d sat sobbing against the smooth tiles, until my vision darkened and blurred. I’d come back to myself with the water going cold and pooling in a pink river around my legs.

The medic’s eyes narrowed just a fraction, and he adjusted his hands’ position around my head, to scan a new portion of my cranium. “Your brain has suffered slight strain and your body sustained minor internal lacerations. I’ll repair the damage.”

With my face as it was, still caught between his palms, as the _chakra _around them shifted, darkening to a forest green in preparation to heal, all I could do was stare at him hollowly. Wondering what the man’s definition of _minor _was. It didn’t _feel _minor. The blinding pain in my head and the blood I’d been slowly losing for hours did not feel _minor. _The bone-wearing ache settled into my core and the creeping slide of my memories into my present, to obscure my vision, did not feel _minor. _Half the time, I wanted to scrub myself, until my skin was raw, and the other I found myself weeping over a past I thought I’d let go of.

If this was minor, I would not survive severe.

Not that it mattered.

My attending medic remained completely unfazed by whatever it was he saw on my features. More interested in the intricate workings of my insides, he spent a deal of time passing his hands over my head and throat before moving on down my torso, leaving a heated trail in his wake. Near my navel, he seemed satisfied and backed off, a honey-slick, saccharine smile painting his too-pale lips. Pulling them up in a way I wasn’t sure meant sweetness or slyness. The man altogether left me feeling itchy and on edge. The way you felt when you were sure there was a spider crawling up your back.

“Your body will recover on its own from here,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose, and making the light reflect off the lenses. A thoughtful cast altered his boyish features. “Are there any other areas in which you are experiencing discomfort?”

I opened my mouth to say no because everything hurt the same, then snapped it closed, my cheeks heating and flushing when I realized what he was asking. Noted the general _area _his eyes were examining. Dull but simmering outrage had my jaw working and my back straightening. My hands shook at my side, wishing I could turn and cover where he looked at me, even though I was wearing clothes and perfectly covered. He was asking if Hatake Kakashi had _damaged _me sexually. “No. I’m not experiencing any discomfort that didn’t come from the _genjutsu._” That came out wavering and strained, but I didn’t care.

Kabuto didn’t seem to either. He accepted my words with no shift in demeanor and walked the few steps to my bedside table, to flick his long, slender fingers at the paper packet he’d brought me. I’d left it laying uncaringly open with the white powder spilling out on the smooth wood. “You’ve been taking this to sleep?”

My body sagged, anger leaving me even more limp in its absence, as if it’d taken some of my fleeting reserves with it. “Yes.”

He turned, head dipping to observe me over his glasses. “Would you like something to help you relax during the day?”

This perplexed me. My mind had taken just about all it could stand, I had no more stamina for fury or disgust or shame, and this man kept asking me conjecture laden questions, which left me grasping at loose ends. Why would I possibly need anything to-

_Oh. _

This simple thought stopped all my mental functions, as limited as they were in my current state, because quite suddenly it clicked. Weariness and a sense of defeat rose in me, pulling the color from my face and leaving me looking at the man with a haunted expression. Accented all the more by the dark hollows I’d noted growing under my eyes.

His cool eyes shifted hue, going amber and unpleasant, even as the irises elongated into something slitted and reptilian. Startling and assessing me, all at once. Turning my heart over because this man was clearly so much more than some average medical-_nin. _“I can offer you a mild sedative.”

My mouth went oddly dry, as if I’d attempted to eat sand, and I struggled to swallow. Straggled to keep hold of the bed under me and not fly apart. It terrified me how much I wanted to accept what he was offering. Wanted something to make it all easier, to make it less real, to turn it dreamlike, as if it were happening to someone else and not me. If I’d had no one but myself to think of I would have given in, taken the out handed to me. But I _did have _someone else to think about.

_Naruto. _

The fraying sense of self I had left in the moment clung on the name with the same kind of stubborn tenacity the boy showed when he made up his mind to do something. I couldn’t just walk through my days with my thoughts hazed and my senses dulled. To do so would be to risk missing an opportunity to get back to my child. I had to remain alert and conscious in the hope, however slender it might be, of getting out of this. _Had to. _I’d _promised. _I might be beaten down, but I _needed to _get back up and face my days with a clear head.

_Naruto. Just hang on. _

This thought was heart wrenching, but my answer was flat, toneless, when I spoke it, my eyes falling to my knees. “No. No thank you.”

“Would you like something for the pain?” Without missing a beat, without a reaction, one way or another, to my refusal of his last offer.

I glanced up at him, no longer sure what my face was showing, pleading, wretchedness, despair, then wracked my hands through my loose hair. I hadn’t even bothered to pull it back up into a ponytail after my shower. Not that this mattered, either. Though Kabuto had _repaired _my _minor _injuries, everything still ached. Moving felt like my joints were packed with glass shards and my head pounded with the beat of my heart. Hell, I thought if it were possible, even my hair would hurt. And to heck with dignity. It was obvious to the man how lowered I was. _Dirty. Used. _Shuddering, pushing aside that internal voice, I dared to meet the man’s unnatural eyes. “Yes. Yes, please.”

He nodded and pivoted back to my bedside table, where he dropped two, small tablets beside my sleeping powder. “Take both of these with the powder, and you’ll sleep painlessly for several hours. Your body will care for the rest and be relatively free of discomfort when you wake.” He stepped forward to hover slightly over me before saying his next words. “But don’t take them before Itachi arrives with your meal. He tells me you haven’t been eating and he’ll be displeased if he finds you asleep before he can get some food into you.”

The thought of the Uchiha being displeased was not one I wanted to dwell on. I swallowed and assured, “Alright, I’ll wait.”

Another sly curl of his lips was his answer. A barely perceptible smile that tugged the corners of his eyes, then he was walking toward my door, cloak swirling. “If there’s anything else you need, let Itachi know and he’ll tell me. I’m now your personal physician.”

My stomach did an odd flip at the words, unsure if I should be honored by the fact I now _merited _a personal physician, or afraid because I now _needed _one. “Of… course.”

At my door the man paused. Glanced back at me. “Oh. And our _Hokage _wants you in his office in the afternoon.”

“Of… course…” The repetition fell off my lips, as a heavy weight seemed to fall on my shoulders. I’d survived three times in the Lord of _Konoha’s _office. Only three. Exactly how much could I take? How many times would the man observing me with inhuman eyes have to put me back together before I broke completely?

_Oh _kami,_ oh hell, you’re just a teacher, Iruka. It’s all you were ever meant to be. _

But I was still going to go back to Hatake Kakashi because Naruto needed me, and I wouldn’t let that silver-haired bastard beat me so soon.

I wondered what of my thoughts Kabuto of the Sound saw flickering across my face. Whatever they were, they seemed to please him. He offered me a narrow-eyed half grin and went out. Leaving me to wait and wonder.

Itachi found me sprawled across my bed with my face pressed into a tangle of blankets a short while later. My eyes were wet, but I scrambled to dry them on a fold of sheet before the _Akatsuki-nin _could fully take them in.

If he saw the tears, he made no comment. He set the tray he carried by my prone form and picked up one of the things resting on it, to tap it against my lips. “You will eat.”

Laying there, pained and as humiliated as I had ever been in my life, looking up into his red eyes and uncompromising face, I realized two things. I realized what he held pressed to my lips was a _dango,_ and I realized he was treating me like a child; feeding me and tempting me to eat with sweets. The understanding leaked through me on a trail of further embarrassment, as heat flooded my face with a flush equal parts shame and outrage. As worn and bone-sore as I was, there sparked to life a part of me that wanted to snap the sweet dumpling out of his fingers at the treatment.

I _was not _a child, and I resented the fact I was being reduced to one. After all I’d lost and what I’d suffered in the space of only a few days, couldn’t I be allowed some time to absorb it?

_Wallow is more like it_, a little voice from the back of my mind retorted dryly, making the heat in my face burn brighter and the desire to nip the frustrating _Akatsuki’s _fingers intensify. But the notion of turning my teeth on a man who could kill me painfully with a glance didn’t strike me as a solution to my problems I was willing to accept.

So, instead, I took the offering he presented to me, chewed it, swallowed, and let out, “I can feed myself.”

“And yet, you have not been,” he intoned, reaching for another of the sweets, to pass it back and forth before my eyes and bring it to my lips.

Another spike of heat seared my cheeks at the action because I recognized _that _trick. _That _was how you got an infant interested in what you had in your hand before you tried to get them to eat it. He _was not _pulling that on me!

This time I did snap the treat out of his fingers, causing him to jerk his hand back. Yet, very much apart from the stinging reprimand and punishment I expected, the man with the careworn face and dead-eyed stare only rumbled, “That is better. Defiance will serve you well, Umino Iruka,” and plucked another _dango _from the tray, to tap against my lips.

This froze me, locking me stiff with my fingers curled in the sheets, as a slow dread crawled up my spine, to set my heart fluttering butterfly-like in my chest and my eyes to stare wide and shocked up at him. I could not even open my lips to accept the sweet he insistently tried to feed me. All of me was consumed with the thought of what this inexplicable and unexpected statement could mean for me. In what way would defiance serve to keep me alive? Would it please Hatake Kakashi for his _pet _to challenge him and earn punishment? How often _was I _to expect Kabuto of the Sound to _need to _put me back together?

None of the implications of that simply spoken sentence were ones I wanted to consider. They cut too deep and I ached so much in so many ways…

“Eat,” Itachi admonished, pulling me back from despair, no note of frustration leaking into his pristine voice, despite how often I must have been testing his patience.

With no other option than to do as he wanted, and not enough mental ability to consider the matter of _defiance,_ I swallowed my conflicted feelings, took the proffered sweet, and focused in on offended pride. The easier emotion to contend with in my current, wrecked state.

Chewing, I shoved myself up with one arm, and mumbled out of a full mouth, from behind a shielding hand, “I can feed myself.”

The peculiarly pretty man beside me only studied me a moment, red eyes looking into me, seeming to see down past my clothes and skin to something deeper, his gaze so intent it made me squirm. Then he picked up the tray and set it between us, his voice commanding, “Show me.”

These words, so like my Lord _Hokage’s _benedictions to please him in his office, put a last spike of heat through me, brightening my cheeks to a ruby hue. I dared a glance down at the tray and felt my jaw clench in absolute shame. The dishes were full of various sugary treats, the food prepared for one who needed to be enticed to eat. This aggravated me. It wasn’t just _dango,_ but almost an entire meal comprised of delicacies.

With my face afire, I reached for the one savory food available, a rice ball, and relentlessly forced it down, bite after bite. I still had no appetite, and when I finished the rice ball, I took another sweet because at least _that _had flavor in my mouth. But with each bit of food I managed to swallow, I felt my resolve to eat and show the Uchiha I _was not _a child falter. I’d eaten so little over the last few days, it was difficult to ingest much.

And with the feeling of my stomach being full, came a wave of other discomforts, mental rawness, and exhaustion to swamp me. Everything hurt again, I was too tired for _defiance,_ and I just wanted to take my medications and sleep as long as it was allowed me. Almost against my conscious will, my mattress began to call me with an irresistible pull, and I flopped down onto it, lengthwise, and clutched the blankets to my chest for comfort, without pride. Despite the Uchiha watching my every move with intent appraisal.

The man made no comment. He only let his gaze linger on me a moment, while he decided whether or not he thought I’d eaten enough, then he stood and faced my bedside table. Much like Kabuto, his long, pale fingers, the nails oddly painted a solid black, reached for the paper packet and capsules there. “Your physician left these for you?”

“Yes,” I murmured, too tired to care, as long as he didn’t take my means to rest away. “He said to take both tablets with the powder.”

The Uchiha nodded. To my surprise, he mixed the powder into water for me and handed it, and my pain medication, to me. Taken aback by the action or not, I accepted the gesture and took the pills with the water. There was no further talk. With a final glance at me, Itachi took the tray and left me. And I fell into a dreamless sleep, laying the wrong way across the bed.

When I woke, I’d somehow half turned in my sleep, so my head was cocked toward the footboard. I’d pulled a mound of rumpled blankets over me in the process, leaving me to crawl out of a tangled mass, which had become wrapped around my chest and one leg.

Dry. My mouth was so dry, and I felt sticky and dirty and _DRY!_

It took me several moments in the shower, skin drinking in the lukewarm water and mouth raised to the spray, for me to realize this was an aftereffect of the medication. Fine, that was fine. But the drowsiness was annoying. When I finally dragged myself out of the shower, I felt so heavy and sleepy. I could think clearly and function smoothly, but I felt I was moving slow.

At least I was no longer in pain…

All of the residual mental and physical aches left behind by the _genjutsu _were gone. Cured by sleep and the unpleasant ministrations of an unusual medical-_nin_.

Yawning, I supposed I should be thankful for little mercies, even as I threw open my closet, to dress for whatever mercilessness Hatake Kakashi had in store for me. I’d somehow slept the morning away and I didn’t have time to stew on the blended resignation, sick anticipation, and agitation growing like an unhealthy flower in my mind.

One more day. This was one more day I had to endure between the now and finding Naruto again. If I could get through this day and the next, maybe I could find a way. And if I couldn’t, there was the next day and the day after… I just had to get through those days…

Rolling through these thoughts, lost to them, my feet carried me to the man who owned me. Distracted and depressed or not, I was still not so careless as to open the office door blindly _ever _again. My feet automatically stopped outside those wide, paneled double doors and I shifted from foot to foot, while wondering if I dared to probe the room within with my _chakra._

It only took me a few seconds to determine _I didn’t _dare, that pushing unwanted, searching _chakra _anywhere _near _that room would be the death of me, and I resorted to opening the door slowly. Unobtrusively.

The Lord of _Konoha _was alone in his office. He sat behind his ship of a desk with his chin in a hand and the look of one who has spent too much time looking at paperwork. A pen dangled from the fingers supporting his face, and absently jangled up and down beside his cheek. When the door clicked shut behind me, his eyes shifted to take me in.

“Umino Iruka,” he said, beckoning me to him.

I went unenthusiastically, hesitantly, my feet feeling as though they were dragging. My mind was still hazy, but my body reacted to being so close to Hatake Kakashi, going hot and cold, while my heartrate kicked up and my breathing went uneven. When I arrived at the edge of his desk, I could only stand there, trying to keep my body from shaking.

_What do you want from me? _

The thought was a slow sprawl through my mind, while my _Hokage _looked up at me with mitch-matched eyes. He didn’t answer the unspoken question, though. All the man did was spark my temper and fear at once. He stood up and took my chin between two fingers, so he could turn my face this was and that. “Kabuto told me you were slightly damaged. I’ll have to remember just how fragile you are for next time.”

Red.

Red flooding my face at the implications I was _fragile _and that _there would _be a next time. But I said nothing, just flexing my jaw, there, between his fingers.

Kakashi looked down into my brown eyes, which surely had to be smoldering, his _sharingan _spun lazily, and he turned my face loose. “Go, lie down,” he said, turning away. “I’ve been bored waiting for you to recover.”

This made me see more red with his cold insensitivity stoking my already inflamed mood, but I would have done it. Would have followed that command. Would have stripped out of my clothes and stretched out on the couch in preparation for another session with Hatake Kakashi, but his doors opening stopped us both.

A mixture of various, unknown and known, powerful _chakra _signatures assaulted my awareness, already jittery and heightened for having been near Kakashi. Body going cold and heart jumping up into my throat, I half turned on one heel to see no less than ten _Akatsuki _entering the room. Itachi was at their head and crossing the room to my _Hokage’s _side with a perturbed cast about his delicate features, but I also recognized Kabuto of the Sound and Uchiha Tajima.

“I am sorry, my Lord _Shogun,_” Itachi said, taking up position at Kakashi’s side. “I tried to keep them out, but they would not pay me any heed.”

“Ummm…” the Lord of _Konoha _made the low, disinterested sound of half annoyance and sauntered back to his seat behind his desk. “I thought I told you to go lie down,” his only admonition to me, as he settled himself.

It made me jump, but also flee to the couch. My mind was stuffed full of memories of the last time there had been visitors to this room, while I was present, and I wished like hell I’d been sent away. But… I’d only… been told- _Oh _kami,_ oh hell. Oh please, no. Please tell me you don’t want me to- Not in front of all of them! _

I was shaking and I swayed on my feet, overcome with dizziness. But my Lord _Hokage _wasn’t one to care. “Take off your clothes,” he said lazily. “You’re so pretty, and if I’m going to have quests, I should play the good host and share you with them.”

_Oh hell, oh please,_ I begged in my head, but I didn’t dare to speak it aloud. It would have done me no good anyway. Hatake Kakashi wouldn’t have relented, whatever the case. Half blind with humiliation and terror, knowing the repercussions of refusal, I kept my eyes down and averted, and did what I was told. Stripping out of my _shinobi _attire and draping myself on the couch. Nothing but an ornament in a full room. A shiny thing, a _pretty _thing, to catch the eye and be admired.

“You will continue with this act of abhorrence, then Kakashi?”

I hadn’t been told _how _to lie on the couch, or to do anything when I got there, and had chosen to keep my face tucked to the backrest, while I rested on my back. Chosen to try to avoid what was happening. Yet, I flinched at these words spoken in Uchiha Tajima’s unfortunately familiar voice, and I dared a glance at the room, unable to take the not knowing. Better to see what was coming for me, than to be snuck up on.

The Uchiha stood directly before Hatake Kakashi with two others of his fearsome clan at his sides, so like him they might have been close, blood relations. To the right of the three Uchiha stood four people I’d never seen before. Their hair was long and universally dark, while their eyes were white. White so that I took them all for blind for half a heartbeat before I realized they _were not _blind; their eyes were some form of _kekkei genkai _I did not understand. _Did not want _to understand. I’d had my fill of _sharingan _and anything resembling them. But these weren’t the only individuals I wished to avoid the sight of. To the left of the Uchihas stood Kabuto and another man I’d never seen before. The two of them were nothing alike, and yet… yet… They were. I wanted nothing more than not to think of it, not to study too close the disturbing similarity of half-quirked smiles over sharp teeth. Of slitted pupils and gray skin.

Swallowing, I _wanted _to turn away again, but I didn’t. Refused to give into infantile fear. I would _see _what killed me or humiliated me. I was **shinobi**!

None of them were overly interested in me, though. They occasionally cast me uneasy, disgusted, sidelong glances, but their attention was primarily focused on my _Hokage. _But my Lord of _Konoha _didn’t appear to care. He lazed ungracefully in his seat, ankles crossed on his cracked desk and divergent eyes half-lidded. “Abhorrence?” he drawled, his gaze crawling languidly over the Uchiha lord from head to toe, as if the man were a practically nasty stain Hatake Kakashi wished he could blot out. “As I recall, Tajima, you’re the one who started this. You could have left me in the Pits, but I was already _trained,_ so here we all are. And, from where I’m sitting, the view is beautiful.”

Fire claimed my cheeks, flushing me hot all the way up to my hairline and all down the length of my exposed, shivering body. My heart did a disconcerting stutter, before falling into a tripping, unnatural rhythm, and my breath caught and refused to go steady again, as a frightened and confused part of me begged to be allowed to curl my body in on itself. To hide what I’d never in my life shown so many people, much less so many people _at once. _To draw my legs up and tuck my heated face away. Because suddenly whatever those words meant, whatever secrets they held for the collection of elite _nin _gathered in the _Hokage’s _office, Hatake Kakashi’s eyes were roving over me, absently-intent, as they skimmed over and lingered on all the things I wanted to hide. All the places no one ever looked at me. And it occurred to me, _I _was the view he was enjoying, occurred to me _he’d _just called _me _beautiful, that he _meant _it, that this too was personal in some way I did not understand. And all of this rankled and jangled in my head because _beautiful _was an epitaph no one had ever used for me before. Umino Iruka the sensible, down-to-earth, the reliable, but never the beautiful.

But, in addition to this mass of tangled feelings, those inexplicable words also made me want to cringe, to shrink and disappear because they drew down on me the attention of the gathered elite in an utterly incomprehensible way. Their scrutiny fell on me with an insensible unease and insecurity, as if they’d instantly been reminded I was some form of snake, which could lay deceptively docile, only to rise and bite them.

_Oh, please,_ my mind begged, as I tried to take in air, so my vision would stop doubling, _don’t look at me. I’m nothing, I’m no one. Just an Academy instructor. All I ever wanted was to teach children, to _have _children. _

_I just want to know what’s going on here! Why won’t anyone explain to me what’s happening?! _

No one would though. If I knew nothing else, I understood _that _implicitly well. Unless I could figure it out for myself, I would remain in the dark.

And all I could do in the moment was continue drinking in air through flaring nostrils, while my body twitched under so many _kekkei genkai _I did not feel my skin was enough to hide what was going on inside of me. All I could do was curl my fingers into the plush leather and watch the great lords conduct their disagreement.

Uchiha Tajima’s eyes burned me a moment, then they returned to Hatake Kakashi. “You grieve me, boy,” he said, low. “However, your attempt to antagonize me will not succeed this time. I do not deny my culpability in this escapade you’ve sent us on. I bare it daily, watching that spawn of mine tail you like some dog.” At this, Itachi stiffened beside the _Hokage’s _desk, his impeccable face going still and his features darkening. A subtle _chakra,_ like a tremor, leaked out of the young Uchiha for half an uncontrolled heartbeat, but then it was gone and Tajima paid it, nor Itachi any mind, only going on. “But I will not stand it silently. You play at a dangerous game, Kakashi.

“I will say it again, you should end the Senju princess and the Leaf elite. Their continued existence gives these.” He gestured at me vulgarly, his eyes flicking nervously over me. “_Konoha-nin_, hope. And hope is a perilous thing. Hope should never be allowed to fester and grow into defiance. It should be dashed and thoroughly shattered, so that those… inferior to us, do not forget their place beneath our feet. Do not persist in your arrogance, Kakashi. Choose wisdom, as you have so often in the past.”

I did not realize my lip was between my teeth, did not realize I’d sliced it open, until my own blood burst in my mouth. It was a new disgust to add to my list, but better that than letting out a sound of horror, as I had the last time this man had petitioned my Lord of _Konoha _to kill Tsunade and so many others. I would not, _would not,_ allow the Uchiha or the rest with him to see how panicked his words made me. Hope _was _a perilous thing, and I desperately did not want to lose it.

_Oh _kami,_ oh hell. Oh please, please! _my mind reeled. _ Not that. Anything but that. Not all that blood spattered in _Konoha’s _streets! Not without Naruto in my arms! What will he do without me? _

None of them cared, though. Not a one knew or pitied my thoughts. Though I was the helpless one shivering and naked, on display for their_ pleasure,_ their eyes still flicked to me, as though I were the viper in the room. A thing which needed to be crushed quickly. Just as Tsunade and the other _Konoha _elite needed to be.

Or, all their eyes except those of my personal physician and his equally disturbing complain. _They _looked at me with a form of humor that said I was the butt of some joke I had no understanding of. Their eyes brushed over me with a strange and distinct amusement, which left me frantic and subtly angry.

_What the hell do you all want from me?! _

“Ummm…” The light, humming sound of boredom broke me out of my jittering thoughts and focused my attention back on the man who owned me. Hatake Kakashi’s mitch-matched eyes glided over me, examined my every tick and shudder, lingered on the fluttering pulse point in my neck, as if it were something he would like to reach out and caress, a fact which made my breath catch, before dragging back over Uchiha Tajima. His words were disinterested and dismissive and completely lacking inflection when they came, but they still made my heart constrict in my chest. Constrict and throb with the sensation it was caught in a metal band. “If I wanted the Senju dead, I would have killed her already, my dear _daimyo. _She made it easy. I could have put a _kunai _through her neck, while she sat behind this desk, giving me everything I wanted with a few flourishes of a pen.”

The _Akatsuki _lord sighed, long-suffering but unsurprised. “So, you will continue to play at this game of yours, my ill-fated child of fortune. You were ever stubborn and unyielding, and I expected no less after our last encounter.”

He paused and his eyes landed on me with disgust and dislike. A thing spiking a hot stab of wrath through me. _I _had had less _pleasure _in this man’s last engagement with my Lord of _Konoha _than _he had _and yet _he _had done nothing to stop it. He’d only stood there and watched me get torn apart like a paper doll because I was something _inferior._

_Bastard. _The word slipped through my mind and I began to feel the first flames of a new fire tickle along my body, dying my skin a pale, blushing rose.

Tajima might have seen what flared behind my clenched jaw and smoldering earth-brown eyes. Something in his _sharingan _flickered and the _tomoe _marks revolved once. But he turned back on Kakashi, finishing with, “Yet, I wonder if you do it only to embitter me. Do you despise me so much? Or do you only wish to heap insult upon injury?”

“Ngh.” The sound was noncommittal. “I’m not obligated to explain myself to you, Tajima.”

“Even so,” one of the wielders of the blind-white _kekkei genkai _said quietly, “it would be easier to follow you if you expressed your reasoning, Lord _Shogun. _Surely, you have a purpose for what you do.”

My _Hokage’s _eyes inspected the speaker’s fine features with the same minute dissection that made me feel he was undressing me down to the bone. As if I were an insect he could easily squash. The man with the utterly white eyes sensed it, too. He made a deep sound in his throat, let his gaze fall, and he sank to his knees, pulling the young man beside him down with a hand on his wrist at the same time. “My pardon, _shogun-sama,_” he murmured.

Hatake Kakashi turned on the two white-eyed _nin _still standing. A man very like the one kneeling and a young girl. “You should teach your brother and his son better manners, Hiashi,” my _Hokage _said, voice droll and dripping sarcasm. “I thought members of the branch house of the Hyuuga clan knew better than to address their superiors.”

“So they do, my lord,” the one called Hiashi responded. He shook his head and let his fingers drift over his brother’s hair, before snapping them beside the other man’s cheek and beckoning him to stand. “Yet, Hizashi speaks for the clan in this. We are not unwilling to follow you, but we are unwilling to do so uninformedly.”

Lazy indolence practically oozed from my Lord _Hokage. _With disinterested grace he raised a hand and made an obscene gesture at everyone in the room, indicating they should all do something to themselves anatomically impossible, unless he still had that pink dildo of his rattling around the _Hokage’s _desk. A notion I wouldn’t put past the man. But what shook me most was the fact this display of such blatant defiance sparked something unaccounted and terrifying in me.

The barest measure of admiration for the silver-haired man who sat there telling every lord of his own band to go fuck themselves.

_Don’t be fucking stupid, Iruka! _I hauled at myself. _He is by no means protecting Tsunade! _

He had a reason… somewhere. And I’d be a fool to think it kindness. And yet…

“Step carefully, Kakashi,” Uchiha Tajima warned. “The title of _shogun _is neither bourn, nor taken, easily. My bloodline bore it for six generations before you so casually seized it from me. It should have passed from me to one of my sons, Madara or Izuna.” He indicated each of the men at his side in turn. “Or, even to that spawn of mine, who stands at your side so deliberately in disregard of what his father, Fugaku, would have wanted. If my son yet lived, it would not be so. My grandchild would be at my side, not yours. And, if you do not respect the ways of the _Akatsuki,_ perhaps the title of _shogun _still will pass to one of my offspring.”

“Perhaps even Itachi will be the one to retrieve it from you,” Hiashi affirmed softly. “Kill the _Konoha-nin _or tell us why you hesitate.”

And yet they were all bastards! All of them craved blood and despair and what else I couldn’t imagine, and deserved defiance. The hot fire of anger rolled down me in waves, drowning me in a swarming sea of outrage I knew would get me killed if I expressed it beyond how stiff my body had become and how tight my fingers gripped the cushions, nails scraping that soft leather beneath my skin.

But I wasn’t alone in my internal seething. Itachi seemed to share it and _he _was not afraid to show it. He straightened almost imperceptibly, his bloody-red _sharingan _almost glowing. “I’m loyal to my _shogun,_” he intoned, and an infuriated boil of _chakra _bubbled out of him. Not a suffocating wall or a blunt object, like Kakashi’s _chakra. _More a dark, heavy tide, which billowed, fog-like, over the floor, to cling at legs and whisper past fingertips. An indecipherable, fearful mist that reminded me of half-read, childhood tales of _oni _haunting tangled woods. The feel of that cold _chakra _along my skin painted a picture of red eyes and moonlit nights and said anyone who tried to touch Hatake Kakashi would have something deathly to contend with.

I _did not _want to contend with him. I wanted to _aid _him, but my own _chakra _was paltry in comparison. I was weak, not even a combat class _shinobi,_ a teacher, just a teacher. There was nothing I could do, nothing at… all.

Only… there _was _something I could do. One small act of _defiance _I could throw in all their faces. The fact came to me on a thunderclap that left me paling and flush, my body revolving through hot and cold flashes, as I swayed through reels of what would be self-imposed humiliation and too long pent-up rage at my own treatment and the treatment of my fellow _Konoha-nin._

There was a small portion of me, which wanted to give up, give in, curl up and cringe back, but there was a larger portion that burned and railed, _Fuck _you! _Fuck _all _of you! _

“Come now, let’s not fight,” Kabuto’s unordinary companion all but purred, as my hand drifted between my legs. “Our _shogun _has never led us astray. Why should we doubt him now, merely because he does not deign to tell us what he has in store?”

“So speaks Orochimaru of the Sound,” Tajima countered. “Who better to defend a fool than the head of the clan of vermin?” Yet, despite his brash words, the man’s eyes kept slipping to me, those explicit _sharingan _viewing me and what I did with discomfort, before jerking away, only to repeat the pattern, to me and away, in sick fascination.

It was like he was trapped in a loop he couldn’t escape, as though his typical composure had been snatched away, reducing him to an ever more uneasy, _offended,_ thing. But it wasn’t just Tajima. The whole room stilled, while its occupants shifted on their feet, their cloaks rustling and their eyes shifting about for purchase on anything _but _me. Itachi’s _chakra _did not retreat back behind his internal barriers, but the young man stood stoically, stridently attempting to ignore me. Of the visitors to the _Hokage’s _office, only my personal physician and his companion, Orochimaru, appeared unmoved by my display. They took me in with sly, curling smiles, which said they knew exactly what I was doing and viewed it with a kind of twisted, debauched approval.

I felt every measure of the attention laid on me, felt it walk across my bare, uncovered skin like the prick of insectile legs, raising the hairs at the nape of my neck and along my arms, but, groaning a little with what I did to myself, I discovered I _didn’t care _. Laying there with my legs alluringly spread, one of my ankles dangling demurely off the edge of the couch, and my member hard in my hand, I realized there was nothing so arousing as wrath and making this room full of bastards squirm.

_Fuck _all _of you! _my mind reiterated a split second before I felt an all too familiar flex of _chakra _dragging my attention unto Hatake Kakashi. The man had taken hold of me from across the room, as he had in his and Tajima’s battle of wills the day before, and focused me irresistibly dead-center on him. And no wonder… no wonder. _He _was watching me like no one else, while his _sharingan _lazed over my flushed body, _tomoe _revolving slowly. _He _might appear indifferent, but he was anything but. The way his _chakra _bound my focus to him with hard but subtle hands, even the way he cocked his head and let his gaze dip between my legs before dragging up to meet my own spoke of this being as personal as all those other moments. _He _wanted _this. _Wanted _me _doing _this._

_If you’re going to do this without holding back,_ I could almost hear him say, voice all droll disinterest, _then show me. Show me everything. _

My nostrils flared wide and my already stuttering heart fell out of rhythm, but my hand didn’t falter. Not this time. Not with so many wishing to crush the life from _Konoha _in attendance and a dare thrown on the flames of my temper.

Unable to look away from the man who owned me, my hand stroked over my engorged erection. A slide of palm up and down my length, digits curled to provide firm, but teasingly light pressure. The upward motions making my hips cant off the supple leather. Just the smallest, prettiest of arches to bring everything into sight. Catching my lip between my teeth, I paused only to brush the fingers of my free hand through the tender sensitivity of my slit. Actions slowing, drawing out the thing, until I thought every part of my skin was burning in a brilliant flush. My stomach felt light and fluttery, and I wanted… Oh _kami,_ oh hell, I wanted to come right there.

Whimpering, I brought my free hand down and started swirling my pre-cum coated fingers over my rim. The pearly liquid bubbled out of me, easing the stroke of my hand, just as it did the passage of my fingers into me.

The _sharingan _in Kakashi’s apathetic face flickered, and his line of sight dropped completely to what was happening between my trembling thighs. His _chakra _still held me, alive along my sweat-dampened skin. I felt it could have touched me in so many ways, manipulated me so easily, like a marionette on strings if he’d desired, but it only kept me facing him. Kept me focused _on him._

_Is the view still beautiful? _

This was a whisper through my mind. Barely there and lost in the sensation of my own fingers fucking me and pulling me to orgasm all at once. The rush of it plucked a needy moan from me, my body twitching and sinking into the softness of the leather, my already dangling, leg unintentionally drooping further over the side of the couch, and only enhancing the display of what I’d done.

“This is despicable.”

My Lord of _Konoha’s _mitch-matched eyes ambled over Uchiha Tajima, breaking the connection his _chakra _had forged for us, and finally letting me see the aftereffects of my actions. The Uchiha was pale with disgust and bitter wrath. Most of the others in the room just looked sick to their stomachs, and that suited me fine. I’d struck out the only way I could and won a pass in this confusing game.

Or, had I won? _Could _I win, not knowing the stakes or the rules?

Hatake Kakashi knew the rules and the man stared lazily at his rival and drawled, “Despicable, _daimyo-sama?”_

A bloom of that powerful _chakra _of Tajima's, that had so lately choked me, and the man subsided, only to spill out, “Not only will you not rethink this misstep you are so intent upon, but you allow this.” He gestured to me without letting his eyes settle on my form, where I lay still breathing heavily through my nose, shaking uncontrollably, and unable to move from the force of my release. “This trained mutt of yours to degrade us all.”

Apathy and indifference were not words deep enough to describe the attitude of the man who owned me. His voice held nothing when he spoke and he had not moved once, aside from turning his head, since all of this had begun. “Degrade you? I could teach you about degradation, Uchiha Tajima.”

There was a silence that stretched deeper than the tide of Itachi’s _chakra. _The moments bubbled, grew pregnant, and burst apart in scattering shards across my consciousness. Without a word, Tajima turned away, and he and the other _Akatsuki _lords departed. Kabuto and Orochimaru with delighted and unkind smiles, the rest still in silence. In their wake, Itachi rolled up his _chakra _and paced away from his lord. “My _shogun,_” he intoned, passing his eyes over us both before leaving us and shutting the door behind himself with a click.

I came off the couch in a roll with all the grace of a lifetime of _shinobi _training, stood up with a red fire in my face and all my limbs thrumming with an energy I didn’t understand playing under my skin and through my muscles. An energy which beat through my heart and turned my vision bright around the edges.

Behind me, I heard the shuffle of my Lord _Hokage _standing up and the lightness of his steps. “I didn’t ask you to do that,” he informed me.

Whirling, I took one unthinking, challenging step forward, toward the man who so terrified me. “Why haven’t you killed Tsunade and the other elite?” I returned. I couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop it, couldn’t deny the pulse that demanded I deliver this importunity.

Then I was gasping, the ripe color in my face draining away because he was, once again, _right there_! The only announcement of his, otherwise unheralded movement, a flicker in the air and an almost imperceptible pull of _chakra. _His hand curled around the base of my ponytail and used it to pull my head back, forcing me to look up at him.

My heart went to my throat in a violent jump. I could feel I was shaking, feel my legs threatening to give way, just as I could feel the heat of his skin rolling over my bare everything. It seemed to envelope me, making breathing hard and thought impossible.

Was he… was he going to? _W-what? _

At no point along my body did he make contact, except where he held my hair in an unbreakable hold. Yet, the intensity of his expressionless face and how his divergent eyes watched me, made it clear this was another of those _personal _moments. This was all _me _and _him _and no one else. _I’d _asked a question of him, _demanded _something from him, but _he _wanted an answer from _me._

And I knew he would take nothing less than complete honesty.

All I could do was let him have what he desired, simply stand there and deliver the truth he requested of me. Hiding nothing, I let my face register the open fear I felt, let my breath puff out in disordered little gasps, let my wide eyes flit and dart over his face.

_P-please… Please don’t… _

_I- I don’t understand you. _

The corners of his eyes crinkled in a strange kind of way, and there was a shift of his features under his cloth mask, almost as if- as if-

_Are… Are you smiling at me? _

“Because I don’t want to,” he said, voice still indefinably bored. All trace of that possible smile gone from his half-hidden features.

It took me several beats to connect this statement with the question he’d answered. My mind was too muddled and torn for quick processing, but when it clicked, my eyes widened further, and my lips parted.

_Why haven’t you killed Tsunade and the other elite? _

_Because I don’t want to. _

“_Ho-hokage-sama-”_

He cut me off by tugging on my ponytail. Not roughly, not punishingly, but with the same absent kind of affection with which a man might ruffle the ears of a dog he was fond of. “You can go,” he said, releasing me.

Swaying with the force of that release, of finding myself free and unmolested, something in me wanted to stay, to contend further for more answers. But I knew better. Knew the mere thought was ludicrous. I’d been dismissed. If I tried to stay…

Heart thumping in my throat, I turned away and dressed as quickly as I could. I was lightheaded and opening the door, when my _Hokage’s _voice stopped me, as it so often did. “Oh, and Umino Iruka.”

I paused and turned back. “Y-yes, _Hokage-sama?”_

He was sitting behind his desk again, as he had been when I arrived. Chin in hand and pen dangling dispassionately from his fingers. “You don’t have to come tomorrow. Consider it a free day. You can do whatever you want, within the Tower.”

I stood there, fingers trembling on the wood of the doorframe, incomprehension ringing loud through my head, as I gazed at this man. This man who owned me so thoroughly and completely. “Y-yes, _Hokage-sama_.”

Then I was gone. Fleeing again from the room where I had been humiliated, tortured, and possessed in so many ways I couldn’t even begin to express. Fleeing, while a riot of conflicting thoughts rampaged through me, doubling my heart rate and turning me ashen pale, even as I freshly bloodied my already raw lip.

There was a splinter in the _Akatsuki _government, like the fracture snaking across the surface of the _Hokage’s _desk, and somehow… somehow Hatake Kakashi was on the side that was keeping _Konoha _alive.

But… _why_?


	5. Separation Of Self

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "happily dumps a chapter on everyone's head" Here you are! Sorry it's late. I've had a few distractions to take care of. Honestly, I have a few more I need to attend to, however, when these distractions are attended to, I fully intend to dedicate all my energy to finishing Motivator here. So, when you see next chapter come up, please know the rest shouldn't be over-long in coming. In the mean time, please enjoy a chapter that did not fight and which I actually had a lot of fun with. Oh! And enjoy mini Sasuke! He's here because one of you asks excellent questions. And I'm very glad they do because their making me think solved some problems I was having with the end. Lol. Till next time, y'all!

_ WHY! _

The question plagued me. Plagued me because it applied to so many things. _ Why _ was Hatake Kakashi keeping Tsunade and _ Konoha’s _ elite alive? Because he _ wanted _ to? _ Why _ did he _ want _ to? Not out of kindness, surely. He had a plan, a purpose… I _ knew _ that. So, _ why_?

_ Why _ did he want _ me_? Me personally out of all the Leaf? And if he wanted me, why hadn’t he- Why _ hadn’t he- With me?! _

_ Why _ were so many in his government, in his _ own _ army, against him? _ Why _ was _ he _ going against _ them_?

_ Why, why, why, WHY?! _

The whys threatened to- Were _ going to _ drive me out of my gods be damned _ mind_!

I was too strung out, too distraught over what I’d done, oh _ kami_, oh hell, what I’d _ done_! In front of a room full of people… With utter abandon… Enjoyment, even… With my eyes locked on Hatake Kakashi-

Gripping my hair hard enough to sting and pull salty pain-tears from my eyes, I spun on my heel and commenced another round of the circle I paced in my room. I might have stuck one to many of the lords of the _ Akatsuki_, but how I’d done it left me reeling and rather broken now that I’d come down off my anger. Parts of me were falling apart, coming undone. Ripped by all the questions and the fact I had no control. I was still nothing more than some stray flotsam washed about on the whim of an unforgiving sea. It was going to slam me into some rocks sooner or later, and there was nothing I could do about it.

And I’d-

“Ohhhh…” I moaned, sinking to a huddled ball, still gripping my hair, very childishly, in the center of my floor.

I was coming apart.

I needed…

Needed…

Well, sleep would be a good place to start. I’d paced away the afternoon and evening and a visit with Itachi, where I was forced to eat, it was well past midnight, and-

I needed sleep.

But all the _ despicable whys _ nagged at me, even in my haggard exhaustion, and I knew sleep would be denied me if I tried reaching for it naturally. Glancing up, I let my dark-rimmed eyes settle on my bedside table and the powder there.

_ Naruto… I’m so sorry I left you. _

I let myself have a good, unrestrained cry, until I was spent and dry-eyed, only heaving dry sobs, then I pulled myself up, using the bed, and stumbled to the table.

Waking late morning, I came to realize the sleep provided by my dwindling supply of white powder was deep but unrefreshing. I felt like shit. Looking in the bathroom mirror when I finally managed to drag myself there, I discovered my face matched my internal feeling.

Fantastic.

_ Dirty. Unworthy. _

_ Worthless. _

The words carried with me, while I took my time standing under the water in the shower. They rotated through my mind, as I mercilessly and ruthlessly cleaned the room I’d been living in. And they swarmed me when I finally sat on the edge of my freshly-made bed, wrinkling the crisp blankets. Utterly defeated.

_ You’re pitiful, Iruka. Just a dirty boy who needs to be fucked. _

_ Oh, please. Stop_, I thought, covering my face with my hands and letting myself cry again. But it was harder to stop that voice since Hatake Kakashi’s _ genjutsu _ had stirred my mind, raising sediments my time with Naruto had settled.

_ Polluted. _

I was destroyed, and part of that had happened long before _ Konoha _ had fallen and its new _ Hokage _ had cast his eye on me.

When I’d cried my eyes out for the second time in less than twelve hours, I settled back on my bed with my arms spread wide.

_ Consider it a free day. _

I did not have to go to Hatake Kakashi that day and that left me with an abundance of empty time and nothing to fill it. I could not leave the _ Hokage _ Tower, could not see Naruto…

My vision swam and I spent a deal of time staring blindly at the ceiling. But that only made matters worse. Left me open to the _ whys _ and the scathing voice inundating me with epitaphs I didn’t want. I _ couldn’t _ stay where I was, so, what could I do in the Tower-

The answer to this question struck me with preposterous simplicity. I could do _ anything _ in the _ Hokage _ Tower, and the mission desk was actually rather close to the _ Hokage’s _ office…

I sat bolt upright.

I could- Could…

Cry my eyes out.

For the third time.

Because I _ could_.

The walk to the mission desk was slow for various reasons, only one of them being my fatigue. I didn’t know how I was going to handle what I was about to do. I didn’t know what to expect. It had only been a few days since I’d been ripped out of the Academy and shoved into Hatake Kakashi’s office, but word would have spread… The whole village would know now Umino Iruka… was nothing… nothing but a fuck toy for the man… the man who’d broken all our lives.

The truth of it weighed on me all the while I made my plodding way through the Tower, uncertain any of my fellow _ Konoha chunin _ would even want to speak to me when I arrived at the mission desk. I kept going, kept forcing one foot in front of the other, though, until I was within sight of the desk. Then I couldn’t make myself go any further. I sagged against the wall, hands trembling, as they slid along the burnished wood. My vision browned around the edges and fractured, as tears pooled in my eyes, and I found myself wanting to weep, right there, with my abused lip in my teeth.

I just… just couldn’t.

“Iruka?”

Iwashi’s uncertain voice had me turning my head. The goateed man stood just behind me, holding a swath of papers. His eyes swept over me. Bright and wide.

“Hey, Iwashi,” I said, swiping at my eyes.

I must have looked a sight. “Holy shit, Iruka, are you alright? Hey, Yatogo!” The man stopped just short of touching me, as he said the last word. Indecision as to whether or not he should actually lay his hands on me flickered across his face.

“Iruka?” Yatogo looked as knocked off his guard by the sight of me as Iwashi when he came skidding to a stop beside the two of us.

I gave him a wavering, watery smile. “Hi, Yatogo.” It felt like ages since I’d spoken to anyone who wasn’t _ Akatsuki_, and I found I wasn’t sure what to say to these people. My fellow _ Konoha-nin_.

“You look- Fuck. Do you want to sit down?”

I nodded at Yatogo. “Yes, please.” My legs were going to give way soon. I knew it.

My two fellow _ chunin _ exchanged a look and Iwashi reached out for me again. “Do you… can I help you?” _ Will our _ Hokage _ kill me for touching you? _

The question was left unspoken and I didn’t answer it because I didn’t know. “No, thank you,” I said instead, and did my best to stay upright, until I was settled into a chair behind an empty desk.

At which point, an uncomfortable and uneasy silence fell over us, not one of us knowing what to say or what to do. I couldn’t blame Iwashi or Yatogo. Watching them shift on their feet with an aching heart and numb, almost unreality seated in my frame, I knew every possible avenue of even casual conversation was weighted with a hundred different unspoken barriers, and the way forward had to be felt out with tentative care. New depression bloomed in my chest, a torrid flower raising a hopeless guilt. I should never have come here and put additional strain on these men, who were already under continual pressure. It was selfish of me and likely dangerous for them. Just how possessive _ was _ my _ Hokage_? _ Would _ he harm or murder other people for touching me? Even Kabuto and Itachi most often retained a distance between themselves and my person.

_ I shouldn’t have come. _

“I’m sorry,” I said, taking in a shuddering breath. “I-”

“How… are you, Iruka?” Iwashi asked, gently interrupting me.

The kindness of it drew some more tears from my eyes. I offered him another watery smile, the only kind I felt capable of at the moment. I couldn’t really remember the last time I’d smiled properly… “I’m…” My fingers gripped each other and worked into undulating knots on the desk. “I’m alright. I- My Lord _ Hokage _ said he didn’t need me today and I should amuse myself.” _ I shouldn’t… _ Shouldn’t let out the next words on the tip on my tongue, shouldn’t stay sitting where I was, but… “Do you… Are there any extra reports you need filed? I was never officially taken off duty or relieved of clearance, and I- I just… need something to do.”

But I couldn’t stop myself from it. My hands slid along the surface of the worn, irk-stained desk, and I let my arms fold down onto it, as my body bent forward, my head pillowing on my arms. And I couldn’t deny how good it felt to have something solid and familiar under me. I just wanted that to last a little longer… Just a little longer…

Yatogo and Iwashi exchanged a loaded glance. Their response was understandably slow. “Well… we could use the help…” Iwashi offered. “We’ve been overloaded since the _ tokubetsu jounin _ aren’t allowed to work the desk anymore.”

“It didn’t help when we lost you, too, Iruka,” Yatogo added.

“We could find you a few simple reports, easily.” Iwashi assured. “Just stay put, Iruka.”

I nodded with my head down on my arms, then cocked my head, so one eye looked up at Yatogo, as Iwashi moved off to begin scouting out _ simple _ reports. “Have… have you heard anything about Naruto?”

The man’s face took on a look of being pinched around the edges. He swiped at the hanging fringes of his dark hair that always got in his face. “No, we haven’t. I’m sorry, Iruka.”

Yet another watery smile. “It’s alright, Yatogo.” I couldn’t blame my fellow _ chunin _ for their lack of knowledge, either, despite how much it ached I still wouldn’t know how my child was. These men had their own concerns, their own families to think about, and I couldn’t blame them for not attending to mine.

Lost in the ache and the permeating exhaustion, I drifted there for a while. Iwashi brought me several reports to file, and I thanked him, but I couldn’t muster much motivation or focus for the work. I tried, and the two of them let me, but it wasn’t long before the low, restrained hum of their voices and the comfort of something easy and undemanding had me resting with my head on my arms, while my body twitched and my mind floated in the warm blur near sleep. That pleasant state where you aren’t sure if you’re awake or asleep and you don’t care. Where sounds, so low they would normally not be audible, grow louder and you only seem to touch on them without thought.

It was probably rather nice in a strung-out kind of way. Better than having to take something to put me out. But I wasn’t able to stay there for long. Iwashi and Yatogo’s voices were the things which were amplified in my mind, and I found myself dancing along their conversation. Unimportant things. Minor matters of improperly filled out paperwork. Small annoyances. And- 

“Fucking Hatake Kakashi.”

A frown curled my lips. _ Yatogo… what? _

“Shush it!” Iwashi retorted, cuttingly. Low. “You want to get us killed?” Almost a hiss.

“He’s trying to kill _ us_.” A shot back, pitched to be just under hearing. “Have you seen these reports.” _ A rank _ missions handed out to _ chunin _ like they’re nothing! Our new _ Hokage _ is trying to kill us all slowly, Iwashi.”

“Doesn’t mean you need to get the two of us killed today, Yatogo!”

“Shut up!” I wasn’t even aware of when I’d come fully alert again, but I was on my feet, my hands fisted at my sides and a twisting fire of confusion in my gut. Both Iwashi and Yatogo were staring at me with pale faces. They’d jerked at my barked words and now looked frightened. Of me. Of what I could tell our _ Hokage_. But I couldn’t seem to stop. My own face was flushing in an angry pink. “Neither of you know the first thing about what you’re saying! So, just shut up!”

Whatever else I might have said was lost in a heavy hand falling on my shoulder and pulling me back into my seat. Hatake Kakashi’s fingers curled into my shoulder enough to make me wince and his dispassionate face hovered above mine when I looked up with blank, surprised eyes. “Is there a problem?” he drawled.

My mouth was suddenly dry, and I found I couldn’t answer. Because here was the _ Hokage_, here was the man who really could kill Iwashi and Yatogo if he wanted to. If he merely felt like it. And maybe that was all my fault. Would he even have stopped at the mission desk if he hadn't heard my raised voice?

Unlikely. The place would have held no interest for him. It would have been boring.

The surety of this left me tingling, as he let go of me and ambled toward my fellow _ chunin_, lazily, hands in pockets, face unreadable. Rather emotionless. “What have the two of you been talking about?”

Iwashi and Yatogo’s faces were like paper, white and thin, and they sat so stiff they might have been locked by his _ chakra _ and unable to move, and I wondered if that was how I looked to my Lord _ Hokage _ when I was helpless on his couch. It put a sick knife through my gut. “_Ho-hokage-sama_,” I murmured, the low words crisp with the dryness in my mouth. I attempted to swallow. “It was nothing. Only some light joking I took too seriously.”

Oh, how I hoped he hadn’t heard what’d actually been said.

_ Please, please believe me. Don’t be angry. This is all my fault… All my fault, and I couldn’t stand it if Iwashi and Yatogo died because of me. Because I was lonely. _

“Ummm…” The now familiar sound of disinterest was half relief. Those divergent eyes of his lingering a moment on my fellow _ Konaha-nin_, then drifting off further relief. All of it shattered by his spinning and leaning over me with his hands spread and pressed flat to the wood of the desk I sat behind. “Be in my office in ten minutes, Umino Iruka.”

Dizziness swept me, even sitting down, and I felt the paleness claiming my face. _ So tired, I’m so tired… Are you angry? _ “Y-yes, _ Hokage-sama_.”

If he was angry, he gave no sign. No shift in his _ chakra _ or change in his expression. With grace, he straightened and sauntered away, intentionally passing close by Iwashi and Yatogo’s desks as he did so.

There was absolute silence after the last sounds of his steps faded. My two, fellow _ chunin _ seemed to come back to life slowly, by degrees, bit-by-bit regaining animation.

“Oh Sage,” Yatogo let out, at last, voice shaking.

The sound of his speaking the words recalled to me everything he’d said and, inexplicably, despite my exhaustion and fear of what Hatake Kakashi might have waiting for me, I felt two livid spots of color burst into existence, to ride high on my cheeks. “What’s the Sage ever done for any of us?” I demanded, wrenching myself to my feet. _ I _ was angry. Rounding my desk, I stormed the sparse space separating me from them and, to my own surprise, I found myself leaning over Yatogo’s desk, in a mirror of Hatake Kakashi looming over me. “There’s a reason Tsunade and the other elite are still alive, you know,” I hurled at them both.

Then I was spinning and half swaying, half stumbling, away. Let them stew on that awhile. I didn’t care if they wondered if the reason I meant was me, because of what I did for our _ Hokage_, or because of Hatake Kakashi. I just didn’t _ care_! It didn’t matter! They hadn’t been in the office when Uchiha Tajima challenged Kakashi. They hadn’t seen what I’d seen. Hadn’t watched our Lord of _ Konoha _ flip off the entire retinue of his own _ Akatsuki _ elite with careless, defiant casualty.

It wasn’t until I reached the door to the _ Hokage _ office and my sudden stab of rage dissipated that my steps faltered, and I stumbled forward into the intricately carved doors. Had I just… _ defended _ the head of the _ Akatsuki _ to my fellow _ Konoha-nin_? Had I really done that, with so little information and no understanding of purpose or reason for his actions? Oh _ kami_, oh hell, I _ had_.

A dry, hiccupping sob escaped my throat, I ground my forehead into the wood, worked with designs of lotus, Autumn Sakura, and Sakurasou in delicate sprays and _ shinobi _ locked in deadly combat, and squeezed my eyes tight closed. What the hell was wrong with me? _ Why _ had I done that? I was coming apart at the seams. Unraveling. And no matter what I did, I couldn’t catch any of the fraying, separating threads of myself. I was coming undone and I couldn’t stop it.

Not anymore than I could stand outside Hatake Kakashi’s office, trying to grasp how wrecked I was. I’d been told to be there in ten minutes, and I wasn’t even sure how long it’d been since I’d left the mission desk. I had to go in and find out what waited for me. _ Had _ to.

Gathering myself, I inhaled sharply and let my eyes settle on the spiraling carvings on the doors. Beauty and harshness intertwined, like the reality of the _ shinobi _ world. Like life. No one got out unscarred.

_ No one gets out alive. _ The thought was a barely-there, but perceptible, weight on my shoulders, as I eased a door open and stepped in.

Only Hatake Kakashi occupied the room and his eyes flicked to me and away quickly. Disinterested. “Umino Iruka,” he stated blandly, his fingers etching something out on paper with rapid pen strokes.

“_Hokage-sama_,” I responded, uncertain.

He motioned to the couch off-handedly, without looking at me again.

I went thoughtlessly, but Kakashi’s words stopped me before I could consider removing my clothes. “Do I have reason to be upset, Umino Iruka?”

Trying to swallow past a dry throat, once again, I turned. “No, _ Hokage-s-sama_.”

A flex of _ chakra _ knocked me off my feet and back unto the couch. I gasped but did nothing else. Invisible hands brushed my throat, dimly threatening, but not applying pressure, more caressing my throbbing pulse point, as I’d felt he wanted to do the day before. “Lying is unwholesome,” he warned, tone bored.

My fingers dug at the leather to either side of me, but I made no other motions, refusing to claw at hands that weren’t there, even if it terrified me. “Please, they’re only afraid, they don’t deserve any punishment. It was my fault for being there.”

“Afraid?” His eyes finally raised from his paperwork again, and his words were accompanied by a whisper trace of my lips with his _ chakra_.

“Afraid their comrades will die on missions too hard for them.” My eyes squeezed shut again and my hands tightened their holds, but suddenly his retraining _ chakra _ was gone.

“Your _ chunin _ need to get stronger, Umino Iruka,” he informed me.

Another swallow. No matter what I did, I could not gather moisture in my mouth. Eyes open and focused on the man who owned me, I didn’t know how to respond, or if a response was required. Hatake Kakashi seemed as mellow and uninterested as usual.

After a few tense moments, I asked, “What should I do, _ Hokage-sama_?”

“Ummm…” the humming sound was one of mild amusement. He began rummaging in his desk. When he found what he wanted, he tossed it to me. “As you can’t seem to find anything to do, you can use that.”

An instant blush painted my cheeks, as I turned the object over in my hands. An anal plug. Silver. On the shorter side, but with a girth that tapered to a rounded end. The flared base held a faux gem that winked when it caught the light from the windows. Pink. But of course, it would be pink. The man seemed to have a liking for the color.

Said man’s voice called me out of my considerations. “Umino Iruka.” He aimed another item at me, and I caught that, as well. The cherry scented lube. “Put it in and lay there, so I can see.”

I let my flaring nostrils and pink flush be my answer, as I set the plug and lube aside and removed my clothes. _ It’s still better than the dildo_, I thought with a kind of hysterical resignation. I’d used anal plugs before, and Hatake Kakashi had seen me… seen me come so many times, did it matter what else he made me do?

Laying down and spreading lube on my fingers and the toy, I realized it did still matter. This was still hard for me. Pressing my fingers into myself and gently spreading myself open, while he watched still made me want to cry and hide my face away. But…

But…

Fingers trembling, I made sure I was stretched properly before reaching for the plug and inserting it. The thing made me grind my teeth into my lip when it was done. I was tight around it. Couldn’t help _ but _ be, given I’d only had a few days of such _ play_.

“On your stomach. I want to see how it looks.”

My eyes flicked to him. I wanted to lower them but knew he wouldn’t let me. He always wanted to see my face, my gaze. _ Why? Why? I still don’t know why... _

_ Why me and no one else? _

A bare and worn question as I flipped over, automatically raising my posterior because it was that silly, pink gem he wanted to see, of course. But at least in this position my face was toward the armrest and my back to him. I didn’t need to look him in the face, and I could worry my lip and bury my face in my arms and hands, to hide the beading tears in my eyes. The regrettable crystal droplets wetting my lashes. I couldn’t help doing so. Couldn’t help hiding, couldn’t help squirming there and trying to keep my hips from rocking and rubbing my member on the soft leather.

Because that _ but _ was still burning through me. What was being forced on me still made me feel small and dirty, but…

But…

But I was growing hard, despite myself, without even touching myself. My growing discomfort fueled by memories of the last time Hatake Kakashi had given me a toy to use. Memories of him and coming apart on that couch, while he worked the dildo and his eyes said he wanted no one else in the world.

_ Oh _ kami_, oh hell, oh please, no_, I begged. Maybe, begged myself. Whatever. It didn’t stop what was happening to my body, all on its own.

“Do you need assistance?”

The words brought my head up because they were so close to me. Just over me. He’d moved without my hearing and stood over me with his face placid and his eyes intent on me.

_ No, please, no_, some higher part of my consciousness pleaded, but my body shuddered and that was an invitation. One Hatake Kakashi took.

“Get on all fours.” It was a scramble to do so, like I was propelled by something else, though I _ was not _ compelled to do it. His _ chakra _ never touched me. My anticipatory trembling and little whimpers were all me. All the confused tangle inside me and no one but Umino Iruka.

“Good,” he cooed at me. Without even changing his abstract tone. “Now scoot up closer to the armrest, I want room.”

A few clumsily crawled centimeters forward and I felt the weight of him settle into the cushions behind me. A quick glance showed him kneeling on one knee, admiring my ass, without touching me. Then I had to turn away, lip between teeth, more needy whines threatening to spill out.

My _ Hokage’s _ fingers on the flared end of the plug and one movement on that item had them spilling out and my face being jammed into the armrest in an attempt to stifle them.

“Let me hear you,” the man who owned me demanded, extracting the plug by millimeters, before slamming it back in.

Shivering all over, I reared my head back and let him hear all he wanted. Then my head was hanging, and little drops of saltwater were hitting the leather in splatters. Tears my Lord _ Hokage _ paid no heed to.

“Put your hand on yourself,” he instructed, continuing to fuck me with the plug.

Removing one hand from the couch left me unstable, but oh _ kami_, it was a relief to be allowed to stroke myself. I was so hard it was half painful. My touch sent heat skittering through my stomach and up over my hips, while what Kakashi did to me from behind, sent cold spikes up my spine. The plug was too short to properly hit that sweet spot in me, but oh how it teased at it. And maybe that was worse. Or better. Or… I didn’t know. I only understood the tug and pull of it left me mewing for more and the thrusting inward motion was enough to jolt me forward with each stroke and Kakashi’s hand was hot on the small of my back.

Burning.

Burning and placed there maybe only so he could feel the tense of my muscles when I came or luxuriate in the sweat gathering all over me. I didn’t know, couldn’t tell, couldn’t fathom.

All that was real was Hatake Kakashi’s spellbinding voice. “You really are so pretty when you’re like this, Umino Iruka.”

I cried out in response, a bright burst of light behind my eyes heralding my orgasm. The force of it nearly toppled me. My supporting hand slipped out from under me and I would have pitched forward, utterly spent, but the Lord of _ Konoha _ caught me around the waist and pulled me back, away from the mess I’d just made.

He didn’t pull me into his lap. The man was already standing and only deposited me on the end of the couch he’d knelt on. Then he merely retrieved his toy from me and strolled back to his desk.

All I could do was breathe and breathe and breathe, my eyes following him, as he moved with such indolent grace. Hollowed out, enervated, and shaking with the whole of it, I thought my limbs had turned to water. I was warm and liquid everywhere, and there was no denying I’d enjoyed what’d just happened. Not this time. I couldn’t possibly delude myself.

I’d got off from being with Hatake Kakashi.

Tucking my face away, I hitched little overwrought, dry-eyed sobs. My Lord _ Hokage _ didn’t let me remain that way for long, though.

“Clean yourself up, Umino Iruka,” he said, above me, once again.

I looked at him with stinging eyes and tried to swallow back my emotion. A cloth dangled from his hand. Clean and white and for one purpose. Trembling, my fingers took it, and, in slow motion, I was able to do what he’d told me. Wiping the proof of my enjoyment off myself and the couch, both.

He’d returned to his desk before I finished, sitting there so natural and unaffected it made me want to cry harder. _ Do… Did you not feel anything when we… When you… What do you want from me?! _

My fingers were reaching for my clothes before I realized he hadn’t told me to dress or given me permission to leave. My hand fell away and my lip was between my teeth again. Dipping my head, I murmured, “What should I do?”

“Ummm…” My Lord _ Hokage’s _eyes slid to me, and he dropped his chin into his hand. “As you can’t seem to stay out of trouble, you can lay there. I enjoy looking at you.”

A pale flush painted my cheeks for the second time, but it quickly faded. Deprived of the energy that arousal brought, I was once again just tired down to my core. I wanted nothing more than to be still and forget for a while. Blessedly, that was all Hatake Kakashi wanted from me. To be still.

Not even trying to resist, I arranged myself alluringly, body askew and legs apart, and just lay, unthinking. I wasn’t even conscious of my breathing evening or sleep claiming me. All I knew was soft blankness and the occasional stir to half-awareness, when I shifted on the cushions, squirming to find a more comfortable place.

Slowly, it was a chill that crept into my slumber, stealing over every millimeter of my skin and telling my unwilling mind I’d been asleep, and I’d been that way for some time, and I was cold. But of course, I was. My clothes were on the floor and I was naked on a leather couch.

A low moan came out of me. My forehead scrunched and I was on the verge of real waking, when something warm and soft was draped over me. Another low murmur of sound and my eyes flickered, giving me a view of Hatake Kakashi pacing away from me in nothing but tight _ shinobi _ blues.

This was perplexing to my sleep-clouded mind only until the material all along my skin became more than dream. He’d covered me with the _ Hokage _ robes, still warm from the heat of his skin.

I’d been laying half on my stomach and curled into a fetal ball. My fingers slipped out over the edge of the white cloth and hooked around the hem. _ W-what? _ The word formed blurrily in my mind. _ Why did you… _

This trail of thinking was thrust aside by my pulling the robe nearly over my head and turning unto my other side, to face the backrest. I didn’t want to know why. I didn’t want to understand how I could have pleasure being a toy for the man, and I didn’t want to examine how I’d stood up for him in front of my fellow clerical-_nin_.

_ Fuck it. I’m too tired. _

And if he wasn’t sending me away, I was going to sleep. Sleep as long as I could…

What followed was dreamless unconsciousness, interspersed with moments of restless tossing. Each time I opened my eyes for a heartbeat or half a moment, the shadows in the room were rearranged, signaling the decline of the day. Eventually, darkness came and Hatake Kakashi sat by the light of a desk lamp. At each semi-waking, I expected to be reprimanded, expected to be sent away. Expected _ something _ that never came, not even with the night, and my slide into deeper repose.

I’d underestimated just how much my body craved sleep. Natural sleep, unaided by powders and pain killers. Though I climbed to the fringes of consciousness time and again, I didn’t feel the need to stop sleeping. _ More, just a little more… _ was my constant refrain, as I viewed my _ Hokage _ though barely opened eyes and shifted into a new position. Time and again… Even when one near-lucid moment came and I knew in the feel of it all the time was after midnight, in the cold predawn hours, and Hatake Kakashi hadn’t moved, just remained sitting and absently working, and I wondered, _ Do you ever sleep? _ And I knew I was going to spend the night in his office, and I didn’t care. Even then, I just went on sleeping, saying who _ cared_?

I needed the rest so badly…

The creep of morning light into the room, at last, made me stir and pull upwards towards real waking. My body and mind rebelled against it. Murmuring low things of annoyance, I grasped the edge of my makeshift blanket and pulled it up over my head, even as I curled between the backrest and armrest. A disgruntled ball, trying to convince itself it had the exhaustion to sleep more.

But my mind continued to grow alert and I couldn’t deny the return of all the things I’d tried to forget the day before. I also couldn’t deny I’d spent the night with Hatake Kakashi…

_ Shit. _

I sat up, a rumpled mess of blurry, blinking _ chunin _ with my hair loose and sticking up in odd clumps, my hands clasped in the fabric pooled in my lap. It took me several minutes to fully register the room, to blink the sleep from my eyes and stop seeing doubles of things. To understand my _ Hokage _ had gotten up at my restless movements and sudden rise, and he was standing beside me, mitch-matched eyes unreadable, but subtly amused.

“Sleep well, Umino Iruka?”

Why that should paint my cheeks red I wasn’t sure. I only knew, struggling against morning dry mouth and fish brain, I couldn’t get the heat in my face to go away, any more than I could form a coherent answer. I just sat there, blushing and remembering the feel of his hand on my back, while I came on the couch.

_ Oh _ kami_, oh hell. _

Kakashi’s droll amusement seemed to intensify at the sight of my discomfiture. The skin around his eyes crinkled and he held out a hand to me. “I would like my attire back, Umino Iruka.”

I blinked, then flushed a bit harder, remembering it was the _ Hokage _ robe I held clutched over my private parts. “Oh, ah… Y-yeah,” I said, handing the thing to him.

_ Stupid, Iruka! _

Yet, a pathetic and rude response, devoid of all ceremony or not, Hatake Kakashi just took the robe and shrugged it on, as he turned away and paced back to his desk.

Left alone, without a reprimand or command, I sat awkwardly a moment, then began a frenzied, and rather obsessive, search for my missing hair tie. I’d had the thing when I fell asleep, but I must have lost it in my twisting and turning.

Really, the search was just a way to avoid thoughts of… _ everything_, and I knew it and I must have given my Lord _ Hokage _ quite a show, making discontented sounds with my butt in the air, while I wiggled my fingers into the cracks of his couch, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t hide in sleep any longer and I still wasn’t ready to face how conflicted I was, to try and grasp at all the threads that had once made Umino Iruka and now only sprang back from my touch like over-taunt things that’d been severed. It was all too much and I was unprepared. Of all the outcomes I’d anticipated when Itachi had hauled me out of Daikoku’s office, losing my sense of self and a sure grasp on where my loyalties lay were not among them.

My hair tie was wedged under the armrest. I yanked it out and combed my fingers through my hair before pulling it back. That done, I distractedly reached for my clothes, only for my hand to fall slowly away, when I realized I hadn’t been told if I _ could_. Biting my lip, I sat, twisting my hands in my lap. Waiting on Hatake Kakashi.

“You can dress,” he intoned, after a few minutes of edgy waiting.

It was a relief. He did not wish for more _ play _ just then. But dressed, I still wasn’t dismissed. The man who owned me seemed absorbed in whatever work had kept him up all night, and neither inclined to pay me attention or send me away.

He sat in a thoughtless slouch, his chin propped on a hand, and head angled down toward whatever document his pen sketched across. The sun coming in the windows caught in the soft spikes of his silver hair, frosting it and gilding it with platinum luster, even as it accented the high lines of his cheekbones above the cloth mask he wore and made the white of the _ Hokage _ robes glow around him. He was… strangely beautiful wrapped up in the morning sun like a cocoon of radiance.

I felt myself blink, felt myself stare, even as I tried to wench my gaze away, because _ he’s beautiful _ wasn’t a sensation I wanted to connect with Hatake Kakashi. Wasn’t one I felt I _ should be able to _ associate with the man it was said single-handedly and personally massacred the greatest heroes on every battlefield he fought on. But there it was, forming in my mind like a shimmering, iridescent bubble. He was beautiful. Lovely in a dispassionate, unintentional sort of way.

It made me fidget, opening and refastening my flak jacket just for some nervous _ something _ to do with my hands. I was on the verge of asking my Lord _ Hokage _ what I should do but the doors’ opening forestalled me.

Itachi entered and strode across the space like nothing so much as a perturbed, dark presence. “My Lord _ Shogun_,” he intoned as he glided forward. All grace, covered in flowing cloak and an aura of unenthused billowing _ chakra_. As ever, his face was unreadable and every line of him pristine. His thick ponytail lay over his shoulder and down his chest and his eyes glowed crimson. “You have not slept.” This had the tone of scolding, though the Uchiha’s voice did not change.

But… scolding. Yes, it was definitely scolding. I was a teacher and had heard enough aggravated guardians turn aggrieved words on their wards to know what it sounded like. And it made me wonder how my _ Hokage’s _ constant, faithful attendant dared reprimand Hatake Kakashi.

My eyes flickered nervously between them, when Itachi stood opposite the man who owned me, but the Uchiha only went on with his chiding and my Lord of _ Konoha _ only took it with minor annoyance.

“Nor have you eaten, I wager,” Itachi challenged, stoic.

“Ummmm…” Kakashi hummed out, raising a droll gaze to the younger man. “Would it do any good to tell you to go fuck off?”

“None at all, my _ Shogun_. You need to eat.”

Back and forth between them my eyes twitched, apprehension making me stiff. I _ did not _ want to witness another fight in this room. But Hatake Kakashi did not appear to want to fight. Instead, he made another half-disgruntled, mostly-apathetic rumble in his throat, and used a fist to brace his head, as he leaned on his desk, offering Itachi a bland scrutiny.

“As I can’t seem to dissuade you from annoying me, I’ll allow you to annoy my pet, as well. If I’m going to be forced to eat, bring enough for two. Umino Iruka seems to enjoy my couch and to have spent the night.”

I flushed bright red, then looked away and fidgeted with my open flak jacket, struggling to close it, when Itachi cast his eyes on me. Those eyes always made me feel undressed. As if he could look right through what I was wearing down to my skin. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t seen me naked. He had. Two days before. When I’d jerked off in front of every one of the _ Akatsuki _ lords… But that didn’t make taking his gaze any easier. It made it harder.

_ Don’t… look at me like that. Please. Stop. _

“As my Lord _ Shogun _ desires,” the younger man intoned, looking away. He whirled in an elegant half circle and left as he came. Like some gloomy, but unflappable, otherworldly being. 

When he was gone with a click of the door closing behind him, my _ Hokage _ groaned out another intelligible something, and returned his attention to his paperwork. Left with no word of command, but the obvious understanding I would be eating with Hatake Kakashi, I just sat staring at my hands in my lap.

Soon, my mind was wondering and so were my eyes. They drifted up to gaze out the wide windows behind the couch, as my thoughts tried to make sense of how many days it had been since I’d last seen Naruto. I’d been taken from the Academy. That was the first day. My cheeks reddened unconsciously. My _ Hokage _ used the pink dildo on me. That was the second day… The blush slipped away, and I raised my head a little more into the light. I’d witnessed Hatake Kakashi fight with Uchiha Tajima twice. Those were the third and fourth days. The man who owned me had offered me a free day, but had retracted that boon when I’d acted foolishly and I’d ended on his couch, enjoying myself while he’d played with me… That was the fifth day. Yesterday.

Sitting there, looking at the rising sun, this was the sixth day…

It’d been six days since I’d been ripped out of my life and away from my son.

Such a short time, but…

_ A week, it’s almost been a week… _

The sun turned to nothing but a blur of brightness spreading behind glass. My eyes were a-swim with tears and my lip was between my teeth, as I cried quietly not even knowing I was doing it. Only looking outward, toward my village I couldn’t enter and my child I couldn’t reach. Not without my Lord of _ Konoha’s _ permission.

I hadn’t even been able to stay out of _ trouble _ within the Tower. He would never let me out.

_ Naruto! Oh _ kami_, oh hell, I’m so sorry. _

“Why are you crying, Umino Iruka?”

The question startled me. A little shiver went through me and I turned my head to see Kakashi so close to me a subtle shift in my body and I would touch him. But I didn’t _ stop _ crying or even try. It hurt too much and I was so worn out… This seemed to interest my _ Hokage_, this bare, open show of true emotion, and he reached out toward me. Toward my face. His fingers not touching me and his expression intent behind his cloth mask. That unnatural _ sharingan _ spun, twisting the black and red in his eye into new shapes. Recoding me. Memorizing my weeping face, like it was a precious thing.

“Why?”

I had to answer, of that I was sure. The man who owned me would take nothing less than continued, unclothed openness. His look and extended fingers told me this was yet another of those _ personal _ moments. Whatever he wanted from _ me _ in particular, this was part of it. This. It was near sexual in its nature, without any contact, without a hint of innuendo. _ He _ wanted _ me _ down to my soul.

And I was caught in those eyes. No _ genjutsu_, no force, only him. Another shiver went through me and a tingle grew between my legs, uncomfortably. Unaccounted and out of place.

_ What… is it you want? Just tell me, please. _

“My pre-_genin _ … at the Academy,” I said in answer to his question, to his _ why_. “I just miss them so much.” The sound of my voice was a thick, shaking wreck. My eyes closed and my teeth found my lip again, while I sat there, hands useless beside me, sunlight streaming a halo around me, tears rolling sluggish trails down my face, and Hatake Kakashi above me.

“If I let you return to the Academy, what would you do, Umino Iruka?”

My eyes came open, wet and sticky with tears. His image fractured above me. “W-what?”

He studied me, face so still, so unchanging and expressionless. Yet, so focused. His fingers slid closer, to trace my lips without touching them with anything more than the warmth of his being. “If I let you teach a few morning classes at the Academy, what would you do, Umino Iruka?” Another trace of my lips, like an outline. “Would you come back?”

Shock and fear and uncertainty played through me, blending to push more heated tears out of my eyes. He was asking more than if I would come back under threat of force. He was asking if I would come back on my own, of my own free will. If he gave me freedom, would I willingly submit to him? Would I do it without even trying to escape, with no attempt to hide?

“I would come back.” Broken, those words. I could hardly get them out and I was sure he could hardly understand them, but his fingers slipped down toward my throat, toward that pounding pulse point he seemed so fascinated by.

I was sure he would touch me then, take assurance I wouldn’t resist him and take me in other ways, but the doors opened again, disturbing our tense moment, and his hand dropped away and he took a step back.

Shaky, body full of weird pin pricks, and that tingling growing in my nether regions, I did my best to swipe the tears off my face before Itachi could see them. I did not want the Uchiha to know… To see how Hatake Kakashi so unwound me. Stupidity, but I desperately wanted some dignity somewhere.

The raven-haired entity in flowing black and red didn’t seem to notice or care for my mentality or what his lord and I might have been doing. He carried a covered tray and aimed himself for the _ Hokage _ desk like an unavoidable force of nature.

My Lord _ Hokage _ shoved his hands into his pockets and ambled towards his caretaker, as if he were done with me. When he reached the other man, he leaned on the desk, backside firmly snuggled against its edge, his expression nothing but droll. “What is it this morning, Itachi?” he drawled.

“Eggplant,” the Uchiha replied, removing the lid of the large tray and depositing a bowl in Kakashi’s hands

“You spoil me,” the Lord of _ Konoha _ said, looking down into his bowl. It almost had the form of teasing, if it weren’t so dry. “And what do we have for my pet?”

I was interested in this as well. At least enough to hope it was not an array of sweets again. I could go no further than that. Not with Hatake Kakashi’s words and unfinished sentiment stretching my mind, until I felt it would burst.

_ If I let you return to the Academy, what would you do, Umino Iruka? _

_ Oh _ kami_, oh please, tell me what you meant. I’ll come back here, I swear I will. Just let me see Naruto a moment, let me know he’s alright. _

The pleading thoughts almost had me crying again, but the flash of Itachi’s crimson eyes had me catching my lip in my teeth, instead, and the sharp sting of pain was enough to center me. I’d been chewing and cutting at that part of me so much, over the last few days, it did not take much to bloody the lip anymore. I surely had marks and scabs covering it and I wondered how Hatake Kakashi could trace it, as if it were soft and lovely. As though he… wanted… to-

This line of thought was cut off by two things. Itachi reaching for a bowl, his pristine features unchanging, and intoning, “The same,” and the doors of the office being flung open, to admit a tiny figure dressed all in gray with a wild mop of unruly black hair.

_"Nii-san_!” this little, half disheveled ball let out, its voice high and annoyed. Or, possibly exhilarated. It was hard to tell. Seeing a child burst into Hatake Kakashi’s office, as though he were completely unafraid and the act so natural it made no never mind, took all rational thought out of me.

But there was the child. The first I’d seen in days, dashing across the floor, to throw himself on Itachi with another cry of, “_Nii-san_!”

“Sasuke,” Itachi said on a sigh, setting down the bowl he’d just picked up and sinking to one knee, to be on level with the boy clinging to him. “You should not be here!”

Yet, though the words were meant as reproving, for the first time since I’d met the frightful man, his voice was not flat, not deadpan, not inflectionless elegance, it was low and soft and held a note of tenderness and indulgence I wouldn’t have thought possible from the man who’d dragged me out of Daikoku’s office. But… this seemed to be the day and moment for unexpected things. I’d never seen my Lord _ Hokage’s _ protector without his eyes glowing red, but kneeling there, tucking a lock of wayward hair off his younger brother’s forehead, those perpetual _ sharingan _ stuttered out, dimmed, dulled back to a quiet dark. Looking at him was like looking at someone else. This was not Itachi the _ Akatsuki_, this was Itachi the brother, and… perhaps something more. Itachi the caretaker.

With an uncomfortable remembrance that made me squirm, Uchiha Tajima’s implication that if his father were still alive perhaps Itachi would not be following Hatake Kakashi around like a dog at his master’s heels rose up before me. These two were fatherless. And their mother? Was she dead as well? I thought the answer must be yes. I’d seen enough orphans in my life to know what they looked like, how they acted, to understand that fierce possessiveness with which they looked at the last of their family, that thing in them which said _ this _ is _ mine _ and you _ will not _ touch it. These two radiated it, exuded it like a physical thing, and their next words confirmed my suspicion.

“You should go back to our room.”

“I don’t _ want _ to go back to our room!” the boy declared, stomping his foot, his hands fisted at his sides. “There’s nothing to _ do _ in our room, and no one to _ talk _ to! There’s nothing to do in this _ whole _ Tower! I want you to teach me _ ninjutsu_, _ Nii-san_! You always say you will, but you never have time!”

“Ahh, Sasuke!” Itachi breathed. Clear helpless pain and uncertainty lived in those words, as if this undeterrable entity did not know what to do with the determined little boy he held by the shoulders. And… maybe that was no wonder. I’d been so terrified of this man for so long, so lost in the certain knowledge of his overwhelming strength and ability to kill me on a whim, I’d never paused to consider how old he was. But, looking at him kneeling there, hints of desperation in his dark eyes, I was slammed with the realization the _ Hokage’s _ guard couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen. Despite the deep-etched carelines on his face, he was little more than a willowy adolescent, attempting to take care of a child.

And an unpredictable, precarious lord, who appeared to protest eating as much as I had over the last days.

A swell of _ something _ I _ did not want _ to feel, a thing akin to sympathy, rose to swarm me and, fingers twisting together in my lap, words I didn’t intend to say came spilling out of me.

“He… Your brother… He could go to the Academy. He’d be alright there, with my fellow instructors. There’d be other children, and he could… learn…”

So many eyes looking at me. So many sharp, appraising eyes, and the ridiculousness of what I was saying slashing through me. Cutting me open. Making me trail away and forcing my gaze down, while I chewed my bottom lip.

What was I even thinking? An Uchiha child in the Academy with my _ Konoha _ pre-_genin _ and instructors? Oh surely, they wouldn’t try to harm him, but there would be no ease between either side. The child, Sasuke, would not find the teachers friendly or the children inviting. He would not be asked to play, except with my pre-_genin _ held under force, and what would he learn? What? What that he could not learn better from his brother?

_ Stupid, Iruka. _ The thought swirled through me and I accepted the truth of it, but also understood why I’d idiotically let out the words. I loved children. Loved them with a _ passion_. And I could not stand to see one, even one of the _ Akatsuki_, hurting. Even breaking apart as I was, I wanted to wipe that hurt away.

That, and the eyes on me, and the fact I was so far from my own child, who was likely alone and hurting with no one to care for _ him_, made me want to cry again. I leaned low over my knees and covered my face with my hands. Yet, the room was silent, and I discovered I wanted to know what was happening. What punishment would I receive for my foolishness? So, I spread my fingers and peered out with one eye.

The man who owned me still reclined on his desk, with his hands in his pockets and his head cocked to the side, considering. Itachi knelt with a hand on his brother’s shoulder and the other resting on his own knee. The elder Uchiha’s face was set and pristine and frightening again, reminding me this adolescent was also a killer, and the younger…

I swallowed and mewed out a little sound of terror. Sasuke’s eyes were as red as his elder brother’s and fixed on me, while his face frowned in half pout, half consternation. “Who is that, _ Nii-san_?” he demanded, pout and annoyance deepening.

“Umino Iruka is my favorite _ Konoha-nin_,” Hatake Kakashi said lazily, even as I let out a moan. “He keeps me company.”

Sasuke’s gaze switched to my Lord _ Hokage _ and turned back to neutral dark, all in a move. “I thought my brother kept you company, ‘Kashi-_sama_.”

The almost familiarity of the words made my mouth go dry. The boy had no fear and the Lord of _ Konoha _ gave him no reason for it. The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled, making me wonder if he were smiling at the child, and he pushed off the desk.

“So, he does, Sasuke. But Itachi needs to go home to you; Umino Iruka has no home. He stays with me whenever I want him.”

The words were like a stab to my heart. No home, I had no home. I was property and could be dealt with as such. Bitter, pain-filled tears broke in my eyes, and I hid my face again, so the child wouldn’t have to see me cry.

Still, I could feel his burning eyes on me and his frown. “But why do you want a _ Konoha-nin_, ‘Kashi-_sama_?”

_ Yes, why do you? _ Tears leaked between my fingers. _ Why do you want me? Oh, please, just tell me… _

My _ Hokage _ didn’t make things easy, though. He never did. I found the ability to look up a little and saw him ruffle Sasuke’s hair with light and casual amusement. My lord’s eyes slid to me and in his typical bored tones, he informed Sasuke, “Umino Iruka taught at the Academy. I’m considering letting him go back to teach morning classes, as he doesn’t have much else to do, when I don’t need him, but he can’t seem to keep himself from getting into trouble. Maybe you can go with him and keep an eye on him for me, Sasuke? If.” Hatake Kakashi’s masked expression was so apathetic and devoid of expression it made me bite my lip, until I tasted blood in my mouth, but his eyes were alive and his _ sharingan _ revolved. “He can assure me he’ll return to the _ Hokage _Tower in the afternoon.”

“I will,” I sobbed, a broken sound. “I’ll come back.” It was all I could manage, all I could force out of a constricted throat before I lost all control on myself and just turned into the backrest to cry quietly, still, despite it all, doing my best to protect the child from my pain. He did not deserve to see it and I could not help but agree with his brother. _ You shouldn’t see this. _

Hatake Kakashi didn’t seem to care for my tears or thoughts. His words went on. “And if your brother approves.”

“The Academy is in _ Konoha_. There is nothing that can harm my brother in _ Konoha_.” This was spoken in Itachi’s flat monotone, but there was no mistaking the pride in those words. He _ meant _ them. With absolute certainty, he believed there was nothing and no one capable of harming his brother. And why should he feel different? What sane _ shinobi _ would challenge the _ sharingan_? Even in a child, they were deadly. My Lord _ Hokage _ certainly seemed of a mind a child was more than enough to safeguard me.

“Then I’ll make the arrangements to have Umino Iruka returned to active duty at the Academy, starting tomorrow,” he drawled.

The statement pulled a tearing whine of desperation out of me, and I found myself turning back to the man with watering eyes, to see if he meant it. I didn’t have to look far. The man I belonged to was standing over me again, all easy ennui and intent focus, his fingers stretched toward my damp cheeks. There was not a trace of jest about him.

Sasuke seemed to sense it, too. His voice was serious when it came. “Is this a mission, like you give _ Nii-san_, ‘Kashi-_sama_?”

Another crinkle of the skin at the corners of his eyes, as he turned his head to the boy. “It is, Sasuke. Do you think you can watch over my favorite _ Konoha-nin _ for me? It will give you both something to do, and keep Umino Iruka out of trouble.”

The boy frowned at me, his forehead wrinkling, as if assessing how much _ trouble _ a weepy Academy instructor like _ me _ could get into, his eyes _ sharingan_-red. His consideration lasted only a moment, then his eyes turned dull and he nodded one solemn bob of his chin. “I’ll watch over him, ‘Kashi-_sama_.”

“I’m sure you will, Sasuke.” Hatake Kakashi rocked back on his heels, the trace of expression betrayed around his eyes vanished. “For now, why don’t you take your brother and teach him some _ ninjutsu_, Itachi. I want to be alone with my Motivator.”

The elegant teen in the black and red cloak stood in a smooth flow of motion. He took his brother’s hand and intoned, “I will be back to attend to your needs later, Lord _ Shogun_.”

When they were gone, the extreme last threads of my resistance snapped, and I didn’t even resist my sobs. Shattered noises I didn’t recognize as my own came out of me, while my shoulders shook, and tears I hadn’t known I was capable of claimed my sight. Not even after all the tears I’d shed in the last week did I think I could weep like this. The tears were hot and living. They crowded my eyes, bubbling up like water from a spring and burning. Burning in my skull from the shear _ need _ to escape me. My head throbbed with that, my throat ached, and my chest couldn’t expand enough to give me air. I cried like only a child could cry, with reckless abandon that didn’t care if it expended the last of your strength. Like there was nothing beyond the tears, no next moment, only this moment of heat and salt on your face and over your lips and on your tongue.

Thoughtless, careless, mindless, I let slip all the tangled mass of feeling in me. Wracking desperation and relief and disbelief and helpless hope were wrung out of me and I knew if that hope was taken away the last disconnected pieces of what had once been Umino Iruka would disintegrate under my touch and there’d be nothing left of me. I would have thrown myself down on the couch to expel it all onto the leather, but Hatake Kakashi wouldn’t let me. His irresistible _ chakra _ wrapped around me, twisted in a coil from my stomach to my throat, and held me upright, even as it tilted my head up with invisible fingers, so he could look at me in this moment.

I felt my face crumble. I could not see him, could make nothing of him out, not even a blur. But I could feel him, sense him above me the way I could sense his _ chakra _ around me and the glow of his _ sharingan _ that tinted my tears red, as he recorded me, memorized my agony for his unknown, indecipherable reason. Yet, for all my pain, he said nothing until my weeping had run down and left me damp-cheeked and exhausted, to the point the only thing holding me up was the _ chakra _ he bound me with. Then and only then, did he trace over my lips with another brush of his _ chakra _ and murmur, “You will go to the Academy with Sasuke in the morning, Umino Iruka. And in the afternoon, you will come back here to me.”

“I will.” _ Oh _ kami_, oh hell, I will… _ My third oath was choked, hardly more than a tearless sob.

Hatake Kakashi watched me promise, watched me swear I would be a good, faithful pet, and took in the working of my throat with a low, disinterested sound. My pulse point seemed to captivate him again, to lull him, but his words spiked my blood, turned me cold. “Do not give me reason to regret my courtesy, Umino Iruka.”

“I won’t.”

Perhaps he liked my begging, liked seeing me wrapped in his _ chakra_, immobilized and pleading, like he enjoyed seeing me brought low and humiliated on his couch. Perhaps I could read him not at all and had no idea what was running through his mind. I knew nothing but the way he held me, scrutinizing me with bored intensity.

How long this lasted I wasn’t certain. I would have dropped my head and looked away, if I could, but he didn’t allow it, until I was limp. Thoroughly defeated. Then, at the last, he unwound me and let me sag into the cushions. Free, I whimpered a little and swiped at my eyes, removing the last traces of my tears. It took me several minutes to gather myself, to retrieve my scattered mindset enough to stop clawing aimlessly at the leather and orient myself back to reality.

I… was… going back to the Academy. I… could… see-

Snapping this thought off with a clench of my teeth over my lip, I let my mind swirl over all the faces of my pre-_genin_. Sakura, Kiba, Shikamaru, Lee, Tenten, Sai-

_ Sai. _

His name made me start.

_ Sai. Oh hell, Sai. _

Unthinkingly, my hand went to my mouth. I pressed the heel of it over my lips to try holding back the useless sound that wanted out.

“What is it, Umino Iruka?”

My eyes dragged over my Lord of _ Konoha_. He hadn’t left my side, just stood there and watched me get a hold on myself. Just as he’d watched me jerk at my own internal thoughts. And there was no hiding from him.

_ Lying is unwholesome… _

“The… boy,” I let out. “The one in my class, who fainted when you visited. His name is Sai. His brother was in ROOT…” _ He was dragged out of their home by your _ nin _ while Sai watched and wept… _

“Ummm…” Hatake Kakashi turned his back on me. “And what is this boy’s name, Umino Iruka?”

“Shin.” I covered my face with my hands, scrubbed at my cheeks and eyes. “He was only seventeen…”

“He still is seventeen.” This was droll.

I pulled my hands away to see my _ Hokage _ picking through things on his desk, distractedly. A moment, and he strolled back to me, to shove a file into my hands.

Numb and shocked, I looked down at it. Shin’s face stared back at me from a photograph. What was written on the first pages was nearly illegible to my darting eyes, but my gaze caught on several words and sentence fragments.

_ ROOT operative Shin. _

_ Held in cell 8B. _

_ Alive. _

_ In good health. _

The file trembled in my hands and would have fallen if Kakashi hadn’t caught it and took it from me. “Is there anything else you want, Umino Iruka?” he asked, ambling back to his desk.

“N-no, _ Hokage-s-sama_,” I stammered. It was all too much. There was nothing in me which would _ dare _ press my luck further.

“Then come eat. I don’t relish explaining to Itachi why I allowed us both to disregard his mothering.”

Swaying, trembling, I stood and made my way to his desk. The man who owned me deposited a dish in my hands and all I could do was eat the food, while I sat in the sun, looking out over my _ Konoha_.

Whether or not I was going back under the watch of a dangerous Uchiha child, whether or not I understood his reasoning or the motivations behind his actions, Hatake Kakashi was offering me another freedom. I was getting back a portion of my life. And, exactly one week after being ripped away from him, I was going to get to see my son again.

_ Hang on, Naruto. I’m coming. I swear I am. _


	6. Entertainment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "sets a chapter down softly and pats it" So... I was going to post this on February 3 because that would be the exact, one year anniversary of my last update for this fic. But then I finished this chapter and realized I had no self-control, so... here we are. Please have a chapter, lol. When I last left a chapter here, I said I had a few things to do, but I would be back. At the time, I never intended to be away from this work this long, and I apologize for that. As I also said the last time I was here, when you see an update, know I will be finishing this story. I still hold to that. These chapters are long and somewhat exhausting and I have multiple projects I'm working on at once, but I'm back, I'm ready, and this thing is getting finished. So, my friends, if you are still here, if you still want to read more of this, and still wonder what motivates one Hatake Kakashi, give me a shout out in the comments. Let's do this thing!

It was hard to sleep that night. Both because I’d slept so much the day before and because I knew in the morning I’d get to see Naruto again. After what felt so long, I’d be able to see my son again. I’d be able to hold him in my arms and assure myself he was whole and safe and healthy. Yet, with this knowledge came a creeping anxiety, which had me waking from my few, fretful moments of sleep in a cold sweat, reviewing in my mind all the things that could happen to a little boy, alone in an _Akatsuki_ occupied _Konoha_.

_Would_ I see my son when the morning light came again? Was he still attending the Academy? Was he even still alive?

In these terrified moments, in the dead of night, with my heart throbbing and my shadow-muted world spinning, while I clutched at pillows or blankets with nerveless fingers, the last, tattered fragments of some dream of loss or pain shifting away from me, it was all I could do to keep myself from weeping. And I wondered what I would do if I went back to the Academy, only to find Naruto was dead. Would I even care about my promise to Hatake Kakashi to come back? Or would I just wander off somewhere, to sit and wait for Itachi to find me, and quietly ask him to kill me when he did? I knew myself well enough to know, without Naruto, there wasn’t anything in myself worth living for.

I also knew panic attacks well enough to understand these were what I was experiencing each time I woke from a mini nightmare of Naruto dead in my arms or quite a different silver-haired bastard than Hatake Kakashi standing over me with a bloodied _kunai_. Within sight of what I wanted, _needed_ most, I was falling apart, yet more, consumed by gripping fear.

The logic of what was happening was easy enough to grasp. Trying to calm myself in the dark, in a room, which felt cold and unfamiliar, when it was hard even to swallow passed the dryness in my throat, or place where I was, was more difficult.

Still, when the cool, colorless light began to creep around the edges of things, I peeled myself off my sweat-heavy blankets, dragged myself to the shower, and did my best to wash the traces of the night away. The evidence of the whole week, even. It wasn’t… something I wanted. For Naruto to see me that way. He didn’t deserve that.

As clean and meticulously groomed as I could get myself, I dressed in my own clothes, the ones I’d been taken from the Academy in, and marveled absently at the fact they had been washed. Everything I’d worn over the preceding days had been cleaned and returned to my wardrobe at some point, while I was with my Lord _Hokage_. The strange attentions still unnerved me, as much as the Lord of _Konoha’s_ allowing me to return to the Academy. His allowing me out of his sight.

_Why?_ I wondered, opening my door and making my way to his office. _Why are you doing this?_

_Any of this?_

_Just… Why?_

_Why won’t you tell me?_

He wouldn’t though, and there was no use in asking. I knew that before I reached the paneled, double doors and found myself slumping there, body weak and stiff and head resting on the carved wood. It was hard to gather myself enough to even think of tentatively opening that door holding me up, to see who and what awaited me in this early hour, just after sunrise. I’d spent a night in terror and fluctuations between viscous energy, locked in my dreams, and gasping moments of coming down off those highs of heart pounding adrenaline, to realize I was still in bed and I needed to stay there until I, par-force, drifted back into a sleep that would deliver me to fear and blood in further dreams. I was exhausted and hollowed out. My body felt limp from exerting so much energy, while it should have been resting. And now, in a time I knew would be cold and pale and somehow achingly calling of wonder, if I were out in it, in the beginnings of the day, as I so often had been with Naruto at my side and his hand in mine, I hardly wanted to move. The only thing keeping me there and keeping me struggling forward was the knowledge, one way or another, I _needed_ to see what had become of my child. I needed to know if my son was alive and I couldn’t let my fear hold me back from that.

Even if what I found ended the fragile hold on hope and life I had.

_Naruto_, my heart ached the name more than my mind thought it, _I’m coming to find you. Just hang on._

My fingers were trembling, I realized. Trembling on the wood in front of me and it was an act of will, concentrated and focused, to make them move to the knob and grasp it. So tired, I was so tired and I would feel no relief, until I knew what this day would bring me. And the first step in that, the first move forward in finding a moment to breathe, was to open the door.

“Umino Iruka,” the familiar drawl of that disinterested voice jolted through me almost the instant his door swung open and my weary eyes were drawn to the man who owned me and who sat behind his desk, as if he hadn’t moved even the slightest since the day before and who was looking at me with those mitch-matched eyes of his, above a cloth mask that showed no emotion. His chin was propped on a hand and those divergent eyes roamed over me, apathetically, lazily, and yet so cutting and intelligent, making my hands constrict on the pane of the door and grip it white-knuckled, while my body shivered.

“_Ho-hokage-s-sama_,” I stammered out of a dry, roughened throat that left my voice faint. A pale echo of the Umino Iruka who used to corral troupes of overactive and mischievous pre-_genin_ into at least semi-decent behavior, telling me I must have been crying out in my sleep, pleading my way through my dreams, as if that could make them go away.

Begging had never gotten me anywhere, though. Not with Hatake Kakashi and not with that other silver-haired bastard, who’d come before him. All I had ever been able to do was move forward. Keep walking and placing one foot in front of the other, until it was over.

At least, it had been that way until I’d met Naruto… _Naruto…_ The boy and his stubborn insistence at life and persistence I should live had changed me for the better. I wouldn’t give up so close to holding him in my arms again.

_Wouldn’t_, even if tears were starting in my eyes at just the whole stress of the situation. Overwrought, I was overwrought and just needed to get some of it out, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it _here_ and certainly not _now_, and I covered my watering eyes with a hand. There would be time enough for tears later, right at this moment, both the Uchiha stood off to one side of the _Hokage’s_ desk, watching me, observing me in this state with their matching red eyes, and an Uchiha or not, one of my captors or not, I did not want the younger, Sasuke, seeing me cry. The thought he did not deserve that any more than Naruto deserved to see me torn apart after a week with my _Hokage_ still lingered under the fog of my mental capacity.

“Are you unwell, Umino Iruka? Or do you have another reason for, quite literally, hanging on my door?”

The words were dry and half amused and I whined a little at them, but I also dashed my tears viciously away and met them with a tight, painful smile that ached in every tattered piece of my soul and my whole, tired body. It was a forced smile, for the sake of the younger Uchiha, but a smile, all the same, and the first I’d ever given Hatake Kakashi, and I had always been good at faking smiles. I’d had to learn for reasons I didn’t have the energy to recall in this moment. All the strength I had was directed into that smile and on holding myself together, so I could reply to the man who owned me. “I- I am alright, _Ho-hokage-sama_. A little tired. I did not sleep very well…”

_So stupid, Iruka!_ I snarled at myself, even as I snapped my teeth down on my lip, to stifle the words, to bite back any others I might have said, because _he_ was _watching_ me. Taking all of me in and, of course, he would _know_ my smile was a _lie_, and oh _kami_, oh hell, what if he was angry? Lying is unwholesome, he’d said and, though I had not _spoken _a lie, I had _acted_ out one, and that very well could have been a mistake.

The flow of _that_ thought process was cut mercifully short, as if I’d been slapped. Only, I hadn’t, I wasn’t. For the first time since meeting my new _Hokage_, the man flexed his _chakra_ and took hold of me with something less than brute force. It wrapped around me, held me still, held me _up_, as I sucked in a startled breath, but that _chakra_ I was so used to fearing didn’t restrain me. Hatake Kakashi had me in his grasp, but in a way I knew on some base, instinctual level, I could _get out of_ if I tired. If I dared to flex my own _chakra_ and push back, the wall of _chakra_ I had never been able to fight against with any effectiveness, would let go, unwind, unravel, _release me_. And that… that more than anything else, kept me still, kept me in one place, and kept me _from_ resisting, now that I _could_ have. Confused, worn down to a thread, I just stood there and swallowed thickly, allowing the man eyeing me with spinning _tomoe_ to maneuverer me without even shifting from his place behind his cracked desk.

His insubstantial hands eased my grip off the door and nudged me to stand up straight, trembling, but straight, and on my own power. And, once I was standing there, under his invisible grasp, that here-to-irresistible _chakra_ ever-so-carefully traced over my lips, just beyond the reach of my skin, leaving me blinking because this time I knew _why_. I knew a _why_ of what was happening here, and it left me reeling.

Hatake Kakashi had seen me smile, he had _seen_ it and he had known the strained thing was put on, a base, reflective thing I hadn’t felt, and yet, Hatake Kakashi… Hatake Kakashi had _liked_ what he’d seen, was fascinated by it. By a smile.

“Are you simply going to stand there, Umino Iruka, or are you going to come join us?”

The question made me jerk again. I wasn’t expecting it, the utter ease and almost amusement of it, as if he were enjoying this, seeing me unsettled and blinking like an owl in the daylight, but I nodded an up and down motion of my buzzing head, and took a step forward. The Lord of _Konoha’s_ _chakra_ was still around me, still wrapping me like a cloak, but it was loose, flowing, moving as I moved, only skimming over my torn up lip. As if its owner still, after all these instances of his fascination with it, couldn’t get enough of it. That totally innocuous part of me.

“I-” Another step forward, my heart throbbing so hard in my chest it was painful. He had _liked_ to see me smile. He had found it interesting enough to not use force or threat on me, and to alternatively implement firm but relenting pressure. Did… that… possibly mean… I intentionally cut that thought off, tossed it away from me even as I took one more step and my lips pulled into another tiny smile. A small, poor, unfeeling attempt to see what my Lord of _Konoha_ would do. An attempt that made me sick. “I’m sorry if I’m late, _Hokage-sama_.”

Somehow, I was standing right in front of the _Hokage’s_ desk and Hatake Kakashi was looking up at me with eyes I thought drunk me in, considered me, but gave nothing away. Left me completely ignorant of what the man was thinking. With the same languid, apparent boredom and disinterest he showed in everything, the man let his _chakra_ dissipate from around me and hummed a little, noncommittal sound. “Is my favorite _Konoha-nin_ late, Sasuke?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow and turning his head in his hand, so he was facing the Uchiha in question, without taking his chin from his supporting palm.

“No, ‘Kashi-_sama_.” The boy’s voice was sharp in the way of young ones and I found my eyes dropping to his face, quickly, despite the fact I _did not want_ to take my gaze off the man before me. The younger Uchiha’s brows were furrowed and his _sharingan_ appraising, questioning. A child, wondering how hard his first assignment from the _Hokage_ would be.

But this was my day for having my thoughts cut short, and I didn’t have time to attend the child or his elder brother, who was staring through me, as if he could see how uncertain I was and was considering whether his brother would have to drag me back to the _Hokage_ Tower, either. “Ummm…” the rumble came from Hatake Kakashi and it yanked my scattered attention back to the man. “There, you see, Umino Iruka? If you stop lingering in doorways, you arrive on time.” He unfolded suddenly from his seat, and I fell back several feet automatically.

Not that it mattered. The Lord of _Konoha’s chakra_ flexed again and this time, as it seized me at the front of my flak jacket and applied upward and forward force, it _was_ irresistible. Once again, the man’s essence was a hard, blunt object, designed to drive home a point. As he casually rounded his desk and his eyes crinkled at the corners in what I _thought_ signaled a kind of hidden smile he aimed at the boy, it felt as though he had taken double handfuls of my clothes at the throat and was using this as leverage to pull me to my toes and ensure my attention to his next words. “You intend to return here in as timely a fashion, don’t you, Umino Iruka?”

“Y-yes, _Hokage-sama_!” The words were breathless gasp and then I was shuddering and stumbling back a few more paces when my _Hokage_ released me as suddenly as he had snared me. He was still turning that assumption of a smile on Sasuke, and almost affectionately, he reached out to ruffle the younger Uchiha’s hair with a light hand.

“And you will watch over my favorite _Konoha-nin_, won’t you Sasuke?”

“I told you I would, ‘Kashi-_sama_!” The retort sounded equal parts annoyed and proud. The tone of one who was not facing not Hatake Kakashi, his _shogun_, his _Hokage_, but any other bothersome adult, who had to be reminded just because the speaker was a _child_, didn’t mean they were _incompetent_, but the tone of one who was also childishly excited and pleased they _did have_ a mission they had to accomplish. No fear… Sasuke truly had no fear of the man who so terrorized me and, once again, my Lord of _Konoha_ gave him no reason to acquire any of the emotion.

“That you did, Sasuke,” he said, his expression returning to blank neutrality and his hand falling away from the younger Uchiha’s tousled, black hair. Seeming bored again, but with his intent gaze lingering on me, Hatake Kakashi propped his backside on the rim of his desk, and let his head fall to the side, blandly admiring what he was looking at. Me. Pale and working to contain my breathing with his clear threat hanging over me. “I'm sure Umino Iruka will be glad of your oversight. He tends to get himself into trouble.

Three sets of eyes now lingered on me and I felt a flush of half anger, half embarrassment coloring my face. I _did not need_ a child to protect me! I was capable of defending _myself_ and I just wanted this convoluted conversation over, so I could step out into the free air again and _prove_ it. If only… for a moment or two. Couldn’t they all just let me have that? Was it really necessary to lower me to the care of someone I should have been watching over?

I wanted to scream but somehow just stood there with that color tinting my face and my nails digging into my palms. Blessedly, by some unknown grace, the man who owned me seemed done with me. He made a low sound in his throat and went back to his seat, while the brothers acted out a form of goodbye that made little sense to me. 

“Next time, Sasuke,” Itachi said, gently poking his younger sibling in the center of his forehead with the first two fingers of his hand.

“_Nii-san_!” Sasuke protested, pushing at his brother’s hand, but with something like carefully disguised pride hiding behind his pout. Then I found the little one beside me, looking up at me with red eyes and a frown of concentration, and somehow we were walking together. Walking _out_ of the _Hokage_ Tower.

My feet stopped of their own accord, when the grit of the road _scratched_ and crouched under my sandals, and, unthinkingly, I was raising my head, my lips parting slightly at my first sight of the sky. The dome of blue expanded over me, uninfringed upon and unfettered, and it was so good it hurt. I didn’t even realize my eyes were shutting over still more tears, and I was just standing there. Standing there… feeling the sun on my face and the near-imperceptible whispers of the wind tugging on the stray hairs escaping my careful ponytail. I was just there. In that moment. With the sun _warm_ and _right_ on my face and something moist on my cheeks. Until Sasuke pulled me out of the sensation and back into the reality of the moment.

“Why are you standing there like that, Umino Iruka?”

I found myself blinking back the sliding, oozing tears I hadn’t known were there, and looking down into his frowning face. Pout and partial annoyance were predominant, as if this boy, who should be off at play and not taking missions such as this from his _Hokage_, were already wondering just what he would do with me.

Quickly, sure he would already have noticed the wetness on my cheeks, but still unwilling to subject this Uchiha child to that, to the knowledge of _that_, and waking suddenly, painfully, back to the reality of everything my being out of the _Hokage_ Tower _meant_, I wiped my lingering tears away and shakenly tried to offer him a weak, uncertain smile. It was watery and barely rested on my lips, but it was there and my voice was only a mild form of husky and strained when it came. “It’s such a beautiful day, Sasuke-_sama_.”

His pout deepened into something borderlining disgust, and overt consternation flared across his boyish features. “‘Kashi-_sama_ said for us not to be late, Umino Iruka! You can cry over the sunshine later!” If he hadn’t stomped his foot and balled his fists at his sides in a display of very young and, hereto, primarily indulged child, the sick twist I felt down in me might have bloomed into more than mild anxiety and trepidation and into actual fear. This was a child… I could not get away from that, but he was also a dangerous child. His eyes were just as capable of killing me as his brother’s and I wondered if he had used them already, or if Itachi had tried to shelter him from the deadlier aspects of his own nature. I somehow doubted Sasuke had been _sheltered_ in his life, but I did not want to picture him turning his red, merciless eyes on some _nin_ and watching them die, either.

So, sniffing and trying, with haphazard determination, to force thought of that and what could happen with Sasuke in the Academy with me from my imagination, I used a palm to smear the last of the dampness from my face and agreed. “Yes. Yes, Sasuke-_sama_.”

The child who could rip my mind apart with a few careless flashes of his eyes, gave me a discontented look, as if something other than my slowness were bothering him, and started off at a demanding pace I felt it hard to keep up with, given my level of activity and stress over the preceding days. Perhaps the pace was designed to keep me from hesitating and repeating my moment at the Tower, or perhaps it was to allow Sasuke to burn off some of his aggravation at the ridiculous and troublesome Academy instructor he was assigned to _watch_. Whatever the case, he kept the dashing rush up, until either he was sure I had no intention of hanging about places to admire the day, or until his flare of temper had cooled.

In whatever case, it was a relief mixed with an irritated self-consciousness when he finally slowed enough for what we did to be called a walk. A relief because I was gasping and my heart was hammering up behind my ribs so hard my head felt light, and an uncomfortable wrath because, once slowed to a somewhat normal, if fast trot, I became aware my parade through the streets was raising attention for other reasons than the fact I was apparently chasing an Uchiha child along a main thoroughfare.

Here and there, other _Konoha-nin_ ventured out in the day under _Akatsuki_ scrutiny, scurrying to their daily duty assignments, creeping out to purchase food from the stalls before the press of the day, and as Sasuke lead our march past these _nin_ and civilians, they stopped and turned to stare. To blink at Umino Iruka, the man the new Lord of _Konoha_ fucked.

My teeth clenched together and I felt my hands go to fists at my side, even as I dropped my head and kept my face averted, doing what I could to keep my focus on my feet over the dirt and dust of the street. Something in me wanted to bark out words resembling those I’d shouted at Yatogo and Iwashi. _You don’t know what you’re looking at, so just mind your own business!_ Did they have no _decency_?! Did they not understand none of what I did was by _choice_?! What right did they have to keep _looking_ at me _like that_?!

But worse… worse… what- what had Naruto heard about me, if this was the way the people of the Leaf were looking at me? What were people saying about me around my child? Did they even have the good sense to stop or cover their words and turn away when they saw him near?

Almost wishing I could weep at this, I bit my lip and squeezed my eyes shut a moment. _Naruto! Oh, Naruto, I’m so sorry. So sorry for all of this. It’s all my fault._

The thought was twisting through my stomach, turning it to knots, when I opened my eyes and realized the Academy was _right_ in front of me. _Right there_ out of seemingly nowhere, a sure sign I had been too lost in thought to understand how quickly we had crossed the distance between the _Hokage_ Tower and the place I had once taught pre-_genin_ to be _shinobi_.

And the understanding had my heart in my mouth, choking me with metallic disgust. I was going to be sick, I was going to faint from the blood rushing out of my head. Dizzy and stumbling, suddenly, all I could do was keep my feet moving forward, coming abreast of my guardian for the first time, making him look up at me with dark, intent eyes that could kill if they went red, and nearly stepping ahead of him in my haste to get through the door. I would have, would have ran the last stretch of meters keeping me from knowing what had become of my son, and maybe that would have been bad for me, perhaps it would have cost me, but before I could tempt fate or the mentality of a young Uchiha, there was Daikoku on the stoop, his face bewildered but also lined and shadowed with guilt, as he noted my approach.

“Funeno-_san_,” the name came out strained and faint and I was, once again, shocked this was my voice, this was the only way I seemed capable of speaking, of late. My steps slowed and a little shiver went through me, terrified of just _why_ my mentor looked that way and had found it necessary to meet me outside the Academy.

“Iruka,” he said, his eyes fluttering down to the boy at my side, who had come to a stop with me and now stood aiming his particular, pointed pout of curiosity and annoyance up at the man who had once taught me. “And Sasuke-_sama_. We had word yesterday you would be coming this morning.”

“Funeno-_san_.” This came out fainter than the first time I’d said his name and I blindly reached out for something to support me. _Oh _kami_, oh hell, what happened to Naruto?_ The words swam in my mind and surely they were apparent in my wide, pleading eyes, because suddenly I was leaning on the doorframe with Daikoku in front of me, at the other side of the door, and Sasuke looking up at me from one step down, his deep, dark eyes saying he thought I was about to do something regrettable, like weep or perhaps fall. Maybe I would have, maybe my knees would have given out and I simply would have slid down the wood frame to the stone slab, a huddled ball of newly-reinstated Academy instructor, weeping his eyes out only… only-

“Iruka.”

Only for the first time in days, in a week that felt like hell on earth and that had stripped me bare in so many ways, someone said my name and touched me without fearing Lord _Hokage_ Hatake Kakashi would remove their hand or take their life.

Daikoku gripped my shoulder and applied the kind of pressure that said he was trying to get me to focus on him as much as attempting to hold me up. “Iruka,” he repeated, sadness and that same guilt sketched across his lined face, “what happened… in my office. I’m so sorry, Iruka. I should have-”

“There was nothing you could do, Funeno-_san_.” I wasn’t sure what it was, the fact someone, one of the _shinobi_ of the Leaf, had finally acted like I was a person, treated me like the old, dependable Iruka who used to walk the streets of _Konoha_ with a smile and a little, brightly beaming and happily babbling _Jinchūriki’s_ hand in mine, or if it was relief at the fact the guilt I saw was nothing to do with Naruto, but whatever it was, whatever the cause, suddenly I could speak again, speak, if only in a low, wavering voice. I could _breathe_ again, and I could feel my heart beating. I thought it had stopped in the moment, but it was beating, there, under my ribs, and all I could do was assure the man who had once mentored me it really was alright, I did not blame him.

Carefully, I placed an uncertain, trembling hand on the one gripping my shoulder, amazed at how _well_ that felt, and squeezed. “There is nothing to be sorry for, Daikoku.”

“Iruka.” He would have gone on, possibly would have given me news of my son, but a different voice cut through his, high and surprised and rendingly close to tears.

“Iruka-sensei!”

“Shikamaru…” I found myself turning in slow motion and stumbling forward. And then falling to my knees, as a little body collided with mine. Warm and clinging and truly crying now that the Nara had his arms around my neck.

“Iruka-_sensei_,” the boy repeated, curling his arms around me tighter. “We thought we’d never see you again, Iruka-_sensei_!”

And that was when I understood. Of course, Daikoku and my other instructors had not told the students I would be returning. Because what if they did and I _didn’t_ come back? It would be worse for our children than my having been ripped out of the Academy to begin with.

“It’s alright, Shika,” I said, blinking back stinging tears I didn’t want him to see, but couldn’t hold back, and pressing my face into his hair, feeling the brush of his short ponytail against the bridge of my nose. “It’s alright. I’m back now.”

Before the one I held in my arms could respond properly, before I could even think about the one who guarded me and what _he_ might think or how he might be taking me in with eyes either dark or blood-red, a strange chorus of other voices began to chime my name and converge on me from around bends in the corridor or from out of classrooms.

“Iruka-_sensei!”_ “Iruka-_sensei!”_ “Iruka-_sensei!”_

Crumbled and tear-filled faces were all around me before I could even think and all I seemed capable of doing was saying, “Oh Lee, oh Sakura, oh Shino, oh Kiba,” as I embraced each new body thrown into my arms. My eyes were full and I didn’t even care anymore. I just needed to examine each one, check their faces for any sign they were hurt, catalogue each loved one away in my mind, even while some small, insistent voice cried, _Naruto! Where are you, Naruto?!_

This thought broke through me with every heartbeat that pulsed rough against my ribs, but another, almost as needful bloomed up alongside it when another face came into my sight. “Oh Sai,” I breathed out, opening my arms for him and pulling my delicate one close. Something in me ached at the fact I was all mixed up in this because of him, because of what I’d done for him. Ached because I knew I would do it all over again, if just to keep him from falling.

“Iruka-_sensei_,” he murmured into my chest. “I’m so sorry, Iruka-_sensei_, it’s all my fault.”

“Oh no, no it’s not your fault, Sai. None of it.” My hold on him tightened at the mere realization he could _think so_, that he could blame himself. “It’s no one’s fault, Sai, and I’m back now.”

I had to let him cry a bit after that, let him further dampen my neck and chest, before I could bring myself to let him go enough to hold him by the shoulders, so we were eye-level and looking at one another. “Sai, your brother’s alive. Shin’s safe.”

His face almost seemed to crack and crumble before he managed to cover it with his hands. “Shin… I-iruka-_sensei_-”

“He’s alive, Sai,” I said, pulling him back against me, so I could cradle him and rock that slight frame, until he stopped weeping. “I saw his file in the _Hokage_ Tower. Shin’s alive. He’s safe and healthy, somewhere close to Tsunade.”

“Iruka-_sensei_,” he choked out. “You’ll watch out for him, won’t you, Iruka-_sensei_?”

“Oh, Sai.” For the first time I looked up and away from him with my eyes full of helpless tears and my lip in my teeth. Looked up to see all the little, huddled groups of my pre-_genin_ and Daikoku and… Sasuke, my quiet overseer, watching me with set face and red eyes. Looked up because my heart was aching again and I didn’t know how to tell him, to explain to this child, who was depending on me, I could not even care for myself. That in only a week I had been torn apart and had lost my hold on myself and who _I_ was, lost touch with just who Umino Iruka was and who he was loyal too. Blinking, seeing the red of my watcher’s eyes swim through the hot, salty water stinging my own brown gaze, I knew I couldn’t. It wasn’t something you told a child, and… and somewhere in my heart I knew, even if I was lost and bleeding and alone, I would still do anything I could for one of my children.

Swallowing back my desire to weep for Sai and Shin and my own son, I still had not found, I faced my young guardian’s expressionless, appraising glance a moment, then just pressed my damp, smudged face back against Sai’s hair and assured him of what I didn’t even know. “I will Sai. I’ll do everything I can.”

I had to let him go then, had to stand, to find my feet and equilibrium, before I toppled completely and couldn’t keep moving on. Moving forward. And I had to do that. _Had to._ Because I still… had… to find… find-

“Naruto.”

His name drifted out of my mouth in a daze and my feet carried me several paces forward, as if in a dream, too numb to feel the floor beneath the soles of my sandals, mind too stunned to think or to care any longer about the ever-present consideration of the Uchiha following me. Because… because there, standing half out of sight, half in and half out of my classroom, hanging on the doorframe, as if like me he too needed support to keep him up, was… was…

“Naruto.”

His face was dirty and wet from trails of water running out of his blurring, caerulean eyes, his hair and clothes were rumpled and messy, and he trembled all over, but… but he was _there_! _Right there!_

“_Naruto_!”

“Iruka-_sensei_!”

Something in us both seemed to break at once. We both _moved_, but how exactly we ended up in one another's arms I wasn’t sure. All I knew was _finally_, finally after a single week that felt longer than any lifetime, I had my son pressed up against my chest and the smell of him in my nose and he was _real_. My knees _ached_, and that was probably because I’d _run_ and then _fallen _hard onto them, but I didn’t know and I didn’t care and somehow I was on my ass, knocked down by the force of it all and that didn’t matter, either. _Naruto_ was there. _Naruto’s_ legs were wrapped around my waist and _Naruto’s_ arms were constricting around my neck and _Naruto’s_ heart was beating wild with mine.

He felt thin, oh-so-thin in my arms, but, _You’re alive, oh _kami_, oh hell, you’re alive_, kept running through my thoughts on a parallel line right alongside, “I have you, Naruto, I’m here, I have you, I’m sorry, so sorry for leaving.” _Those_ words I kept babbling over and over again in his ear, as I held him and he clung to me with near-painful desperation and wailed my name.

Part of me might have understood this display in front of Uchiha Sasuke was dangerous because of what he could tell my Lord Hatake Kakashi, but I couldn’t focus on that in the moment. I had been away from my son too long and I had thought he might be dead and I had no time or ability to think of anything else but the fact we were both here, and for this one instant nothing mattered and Hatake Kakashi could go fuck himself with his own dildo.

“I have you, Naruto, I have you, everything’s alright. Shhh, shhh, it’s alright.”

“Iruka-_sensei_!” It was a mewing little cry and it hurt just to hear it, as if someone were taking a _kunai_ to my skin. “I thought- I thought you were dead, or you were hurt, and I couldn’t get to you! I- I couldn’t do anything!”

“Oh Naruto, Naruto, it’s alright.” To both our reluctance, I unwound his hands from around my neck, so I could touch his face and smudge some of the mess there away with my palms. “I’m here, Naruto. I’m not…” I had to swallow down the words that wanted to break out of my mouth. Shove them away and search for those that were appropriate to say to a child. “I’m not hurt. I’m tired. The… the Lord _Hokage_… he… he’s lonely and he needs someone to keep him company, that’s all. He’s been-”

_Been what, Iruka?_ A sharp voice asked in my mind. Perhaps more _demanded_ because I was running up against one of my unanswerable _whys_ and I didn’t know what words to say next. What _had_ Hatake Kakashi _been_ with me?

“Our _Hokage_… he’s been… kind to me, Naruto.” I pressed my forehead to my son’s and held him tight. “I’m safe and I’m here and we’re together. Lord _Hokage_ is letting me come back to teach morning classes here at the Academy.”

_Kind._ The word stood in my mind like a boulder. The man who owned me hadn’t been _kind_ to me. He’d humiliated me, wrecked me, made me feel small for his own pleasure, and treated my mind and most precious memories as play things in his personal games, without explanation or apology. _Kind_ was not what Hatake Kakashi was. _Kind_ did not describe him, and yet… As much as the man had violated my mind and made me low, he had never done other things I’d expected of him from the beginning. He’d never laid a hand on me, and that… that somehow meant something to me. Hadn’t I suffered worse things than Hatake Kakashi already and come out alive? I didn’t understand and none of the things happening in my wasted mind were things I could explain to Naruto. To a child.

I didn’t even want to try. I just wanted to wipe away the fresh tears gathering in his eyes and hold him until he felt safe.

“You’re going away again, Iruka-_sensei_.”

I let him wrap my neck in another stranglehold and this time I did rock him back and forth, not caring what a sight we were. There. On the floor. An exhausted and worn _chunin_, stupidly on his backside on the hardwood, and an overwrought pre-_genin_, weeping his eyes out. I just wound my arms around him again and held on. “I’m not going away again, Naruto. I’m not leaving you. I promised, remember? I promised we would be together. The _Hokage_ needs me in the Tower, but we’ll see each other every day. No matter what.”

Desperately, I hoped that was true. Hoped with everything worthwhile in me, I wasn’t lying. Hoped my _Hokage_ would not change his mind and imprison me in the Tower, nothing more than some _pretty_ thing to be looked at. _Please…_ a small part of me pleaded, _please let it be true. Oh _kami_, or hell, just let us be together for a little while. It won’t cost you anything… Nothing at all._

Stupid to beg someone not even there. Stupid, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. I _needed_ Naruto, but more than that, he needed me. He was just a little boy and all alone in _Konoha_. I couldn’t leave him again. _Couldn’t._

But, the recollection of the limitations on my freedom recalled to me exactly how short a time I actually had, as well as reminded me I hadn’t come back to the Academy unsupervised. Sasuke was here, possibly recording me sitting there, holding Naruto and babbling empty words. I had to take some care and I had to pull the tattered bits of myself back together long enough to work through my morning classes… so I could see just what it was my Lord of _Konoha_ would have waiting for me when I returned to him.

Daring a glance at my overseer, who was studiously looking away from me with brooding, blood-red eyes, I sniffed and began palming moisture from my cheeks. “Come on, Naruto,” I said, offering him a weak but more genuine of a smile than I had managed since the day I had been ripped away from this place, “it’s time for class.”

It was surprisingly easy to shepherd the gathered gaggle of pre-_genin_ from the hall into my classroom. None of them seemed to want to be away from me, and several clung on me or hovered as close to me as they could for as long as they could. What was hard was disentangling myself from them and Naruto and trying to organize a class. No matter what I did or how I tried, I could not seem to hold a single thought or escape the murmured, whimpered repetitions of, “Iruka-_sensei_,” as my students cried behind their hands or arms and digested the understanding I was safe and had come back. Facing my precious ones from behind my desk, I could not avoid that any more than I could not avoid the way the Leaf pre-_genin_ seemed to form a pool of space around Sasuke and to shift away from the dark, moody line of his sight.

They were nervous around him. Scared. And I bit my lip, until it bled, trying to decide what to do. Fatigue and expanded adrenaline left me spent and shaken and my class… my class was on edge.

In the end, there was just too much restless energy locked in the room and I knew I would never be able to teach a coherent lesson, without forethought not based in desperation and fear for my son’s life, and I clapped my hands and sent us all to the yard for sparing practice. This too was rather useless and haphazard and quickly over, but it was a suitable farce to get all my pre-_genin_ out of the Academy’s walls and under the sun.

I set a few sparring matches underway and watched their progress, but this only highlighted my exhaustion and lack of focus and the problem I had called Uchiha Sasuke. I had told his brother he could come to the Academy to learn, then cursed myself for a fool, when I realized how little he had to learn among my pre-_genin_ and fellow instructors. Now he was here and what could I teach him? He sat on tree limbs and looked on the clumsy sparing with an imperious eye, and I had little doubt I could pair him against any of my pre-_genin_, even if I thought any of them would dare try. The boy was alone and I was responsible for that when all I had wanted for him was some companionship.

_Stupid Iruka…_

Yes, yes it was, but what was I supposed to do now?

Heart in my throat and lip between my teeth, I wrung my hands, until they ached, and went to stand under his tree and offered to spar with him myself. A haughty frown, under puckered brows, was the only response I got for my trouble, but the little bundle of gray clothes and disheveled black hair came down and spared with me a few rounds.

It was quickly apparent, despite our size difference and disparate ages, I was no match for my mostly silent watchman, even with his _sharingan_ carefully kept hidden. Heart fluttering like a frightened bird and head spinning from physical exertion I was no longer used to, the last lingering effects of pain, and lack of sleep, I called a halt to everything, to sit on the grass and breathe for a moment in the shade.

Somehow, Naruto climbed into my lap and Sai snuggled against my side and Shikamaru against my back and I ended dozing on the ground with my arms over several pre-_genin_ and Naruto snoring open-mouthed near my chest. Drowsy and drifting in a warm haze of soft pleasure, I could only comprehend how good this was. How simply sweet it was to have another living person this close to me, not afraid of losing their life for it. I had needed this and much of me wished to never move. My fellow Academy instructors came and went and said nothing. The only constraint I had was time, and that I could not change.

As much as I wished for sleep, eternally, and the ability to forget, I couldn’t. I had promised Hatake Kakashi I would come back and I would not risk his ire by breaking that promise. Not when keeping it meant getting to come back to Naruto tomorrow.

All too soon, I was rousing unwilling pre-_genin_ and maneuvering them back into the Academy to soft, rather hopeless resistance it was pathetic to see, and protests of, “But why, Iruka-_sensei_?” I had no good way of answering. My young ones wanted me to leave them as little as I wanted to go and it was heart-wrenching to see their tears and fearful expressions, making it all too apparent every one of them was afraid I would not come back the next day, as I vowed over and over I would, while I pried their hands away and lost my fight to hold back my own tears.

Separating from Naruto again was the singly most painful thing I’d had to endure since first laying eyes on my Lord of _Konoha_, but at least this time I got to hold him and we both were allowed to cling to each other and I was able to swear repeatedly I would see him the next day. We weren’t simply ripped away from each other with no idea when or if we would ever see each other again. That helped, if only in a small, stinging way, and I was holding my abused lip between my teeth and desperately, determinedly, pushing tears off my face with the heels of my hands, when I stumbled out the door of the Academy in search of Sasuke, who had grown tired of me and my crying and goodbyes and gone out to wait for me.

Blurry-eyed, sniffing and trembling from the emotion of it all, feeling I was already wrung out and had not yet even had my time with the man who owned me, I stood under the sun, wondering where in all the world the child meant to be watching me was. I knew, all too well, he would not have gone far. He took his responsibility of making sure I didn’t _get into trouble_ too seriously for that, but… where had he gone?

I turned on my feet a few moments, scanning the green around the Academy and the street, for any sign of a small, mostly rumpled and annoyed Uchiha. “Sasuke-_sama_?” I said into the noon air, voice rough from all the crying I’d been doing. It was hard to remember a day I had not cried, since the _Akatsuki_ had taken _Konoha_, with a few strokes of a pen in the office I had spent much of the preceding week in. And it was equally hard to understand being alone outside the Academy. “Sasuke-_sama_?” I said again, my feet moving on their own, tentatively taking me toward the only sound in the still air, the trail of a strangled voice, taking me there, though, some deep, internal part of me understood I knew this voice and it did not belong to the child Hatake Kakashi had tasked with watching out for me.

“Kiba?” The question fell off my lips, as my trudging, somehow unwilling feet stopped with a jerk. A sight of messy brown hair, red, inverted triangles painted on pale cheeks, and the small, fuzzy features of the puppy called Akamaru that Kiba kept close, poking up out of the child’s shirt blended eerily, almost dizzily, with that of tousled black hair, gray clothes, and carefully controlled, dark eyes, that could spin red and deadly with the _sharingan_, if my pre-_genin_ made a wrong move. The two stood close to the wall surrounding the yard, almost screened by a clump of trees, and the air hung heavy between them, empty, silent, and yet I had no trouble imagining the things that might have been said before I arrived.

Sasuke leaned on the wall, reclined on it, his arms carefully, almost nonchalantly, folded over his chest, as if none of this mattered to him, his normally brooding face stoic. Seeing him this way, so held back, it was like looking at a picture of his brother, Itachi, at a younger age. Kiba, on the other hand, looked as though he were about to fall apart, or, at the very least, degenerate into tears at any moment. My young pre-_genin_’s face was white and his eyes tear-reddened and swimming. His lip was trembling and maybe that was to be expected, his whole frame was shaking, belying his clenched fists.

Kiba wasn’t there for a fight. Kiba was about to start sobbing at the slightest touch.

“Iruka-_sensei_,” he whined, when the two young ones noticed me, and he looked up at me, trying to control the shivers running all through him by sheer force of will.

“Kiba,” I repeated, my voice small, a wave of helplessness and fear making me dizzy and causing my head to spin. _Oh _kami_, oh hell_, spun up from nowhere, but all I could think to speak was a reflective question. “What’s going on?”

“Why’s he here?!” the Inuzuka choked out. “What is he even doing here, Iruka-_sensei_?! How can he just be here after-”

My young one broke off on a high keen and covered his face with an arm, losing his battle with weeping, at last, but not wanting the other child to see it. And despite it all, despite this dangerous outburst, which could be enough to get one of my dear ones killed, I found my fear falling away, to be replaced by sadness. Heartsick, bone-weary sorrow.

But at least _this_ was something I knew how to _deal_ with. Or, something I could at least comprehend on an intimate level. An all too familiar and well-known thing, and I found my feet moving without my having told them too.

“Oh, Kiba,” I said, falling to my already-sore knees and pulling him into my arms, my eyes squeezing shut.

The small body pressed against mine sagged and let out messy sobs into the curve of my neck, his hands catching in my clothes and clinging there. “It’s their fault, it’s all their fault! The _Akatsuki_!” The last was something between a hiccup and a strangled choke. “If it weren't for them, my p-parents- My parents…”

Kiba trailed away into little whimpers and all I could do was bury my face in his hair and smell him and feel the same soul-deep ache, the same impossible loss, as this boy in my arms. My throat was tight and my voice thick when it came. “I know, Kiba, I know.” _And if it weren’t for them, if it weren’t for Hatake Kakashi, I wouldn’t have to spend my days locked in some perverse game I don’t understand, while Naruto is out here, all alone._ “But none of that is Sasuke’s fault. He didn’t start this war, and just because he was born _Akatsuki_ doesn’t mean he hasn’t lost people too.”

“Who did he lose, Iruka-_sensei_?! Who?!”

The words were bitter shouts and just made me want to hold him tighter, this boy whose parents had been cut down in the streets, after _Konoha’s_ surrender had been signed, cut down over a small thing even I didn’t understand. Too much loss... Too much blood and death dealt out to comprehend or explain to one who only knew his parents were dead. Pressing a hand between small shoulder blades, I buried my nose deeper in his hair and tried to comfort him. “Kiba- I-”

“My parents…” This was soft, fluttering on the still noon air, like the small, uncertain beats of a butterfly’s wings. “My parents died fighting in _Suna_.”

Blinking back tears, _more tears_, after all those I had already shed, I found myself looking at a Sasuke I had not seen before. The indulged and somewhat spoiled, moody and silently reserved boy was gone, as was his affected, abstract superiority. This was just a child, a child alone and among strangers, and he was about to cry.

“I-itachi said they were fighting so we could have a home, but then we came here and we still don’t have a home and _Nii-san_ never has time to teach me _ninjutsu_!” _Now_ the impetuous and annoyed Uchiha I had seen in the _Hokage’s_ office was back. The small ball of indignant, demanding _Akatsuki_ clenched his fists and stamped his foot when he said the last words, but… but he still ducked his head and spun away, to hide his face from the two of us from the Leaf. There was a shine on his eyes that had nothing to do with the _sharingan_ and, with his back to us, he fisted wetness from his eyes.

Shock held me down, memories and thoughts running wild through my abused and oh-so-tired mind. This boy and his brother in Hatake Kakashi’s space. The loneliness and demand for attention he’d flung at his brother, _Itachi_, without a single thought to me or fear of the man who was, inexplicably, in some way I didn’t understand, his _shogun_. Looking at him, this small boy, all I seemed capable of doing was kneeling there, limply holding Kiba in the sagging circle of my arms, wanting to reach out to them both and somehow make the pain go away.

“Sasuke... “I murmured, hand moving on its own, to do as my internal _want_ desired and reach for him. The one I already held stopped me before I could, though. Stopped me cold with further shock.

“It’s not fair!” Kiba shrugged out of my arms. Thick, bubbling tears were oozing down his messy face and they sparkled in the air when he shook his head and almost screamed more words. “It’s not fair! I don’t want to feel bad for you and now I do and it’s not fair!”

“Kiba…” the name fell off my lips and I struggled to reach out to him, but he backed away, eyes squeezed closed and head turning back and forth. He bumped up against a tree and let out a little cry.

“I don’t want to feel sorry for you! I don’t want to! But… but- I’m sorry! I’m sorry, alright?!”

“Kiba!” I moved to make a grab at the freely weeping boy, but he darted away, leaving me there, on my knees in the dirt, one hand braced on the hot, sandy ground, the other outstretched and trembling. “Oh, Kiba.”

I heaved a sob and covered my face with the hand I hadn’t been able to reach my pre-_genin_ with. That I should be able to cry _more_ was lost on me. I didn’t _care_, I just knew oh _kami_, oh hell, my head hurt and my heart was so torn in so many different directions and ways I just wanted to _sleep_ again, but I couldn’t because-

“Come on, Umino Iruka. Kashi-_sama_ said you had to be back at the Tower in the afternoon.”

Because I had to go back to Hatake Kakashi beside a young Uchiha and I didn’t have time to think or work through all the thoughts in my head, much less cry about them. “Yes,” I let out, brokenly. “Yes, Sasuke-_sama_, we have to get back.”

We walked in silence for a while, the way we had on the way to the Academy, and I didn’t expect him to break it. Didn’t expect him to look up at me with dark, inquisitive and thoughtful eyes and say, “You got him to apologize.”

The words rocked me, made me trip in my stride, and I took my lip in my teeth, glancing down at the ruffled child at my side. Hair and clothes so at odds with his intent focus. “I did,” I said through a tight throat that chipped my words, cracked them, because how could I tell this Uchiha I hated that any child should have to feel pain? How could I express that none of them deserved it, but that it was always the ones who didn’t deserve it she seemed to suffer, while the ones to blame looked away?

I couldn’t explain that any more than I could the fact I had again defended one of those who had brought _Konoha_ down, even if he was a child. I had no words and no excuses. I was lost and only my pre-_genin_ seemed to know how to act around me.

The little one walking at my side glanced up at me and away, the pout I had grown accustomed to on his features turned to frown. “_Nii-san_… _Nii-san_ said we can’t expect them to like us. You Leaf _Shinobi_. That we took _Konoha_ away from you and we can’t expect you to be nice to us.” His brows formed a V on his forehead, drawing together as he thought, working his way through something. “But you don’t hate me, do you, Umino Iruka?”

My throat tightened and my eyes stung. He was looking up at me again and there was something bare and open in that look. A longing and a sadness all tangled up in this boy, who could very well be a killer. What had he done or seen to earn his _sharingan_ after all, when the oldest stories said the most battle-hardened _shinobi_ sometimes could not awaken their _kekkei genkai_?

“No, Sasuke-_sama_.” The words were near whisper. “I don’t hate you.”

How could I? Oh _kami_, oh hell, how could I hate a child, even if he was being used against me?

“Stop calling me _sama_!” he snapped, testily, as if annoyed by and thoroughly through with the emotion of the moment, his pout and irritable attitude reasserting itself. “Kashi-_sama_ is _sama_! He’s _old_! And I want to call you Iruka-_sensei_.”

I nearly tripped again, the hilarity of the implication Hatake Kakashi, who could be no more than thirty, _if that_, was old, thrown together with a demand I was sure his brother, much less his _grandfather_, would not like, almost taking my feet out from under me. I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or let the blood run out of my face, so I would be pale under my perpetual tan.

“S-sasuke-_sama_-”

“Sasuke!” He corrected. “And why can’t I call you Iruka-_sensei_? Everyone calls you Iruka-_sensei_…”

“Yes…” I admitted, unable to deny all my pre-_genin_ used that name and even some of the adults were prone to just addressing me as _sensei_. “You can call me whatever you like, Sasuke-_s_\- Sasuke.”

It was hard to tell if the look he shot me was arrogant superiority or elation. The younger Uchiha could be no easier to read than his elder brother, with his stoic attitude and ineffable, deadpan features, but he trotted on beside me with a cocky tilt to his head and a light of something in his eyes. After another quiet time, walking the now-busy streets in the sun, he moved closer to me and started looking up at me and away, over and over again, a note of concentration on his face.

A flush crept over my face, painting my cheeks with a rose blush, my heart skittering in my chest. I had been around enough children to know that flittering kind of glance and body language. This was the look of a child at the side of an adult they trusted, wanting to hold onto that adult for reassurance sake, but uncertain how to simply reach up and take their hand. And I- I…

Carefully, keeping my eyes straight ahead, I held out a hand to him, heart throbbing hard suddenly. Wondering if he would take the hand I offered or if I had misjudged. And if Uchiha Tajima would think my touching his grandson was an as unforgivable action as Hatake Kakashi might think anyone touching me was.

A tiny, cool hand sliding into mine and clinging there answered my question and drove any thought of the elder Uchiha from my mind. I let my fingers close over his, color draining back out of my face. My teeth clenched and I forced myself to face forward and not let my eyes drift. It was not lost on me how my fellow _shinobi_ and citizens of the Leaf, those who that morning had stared at Umino Iruka, our _Hokage’s_ fuck toy, now paused and looked at me, at Umino Iruka now walking hand in hand with an _Akatsuki_ child. It was not lost on me and I held my head high, face pale and drawn and bone-weary, but set. _Let_ them look. Let them wonder at Umino Iruka caring for a child, a child who might have done nothing wrong. A child who’d lost his parents to a war as much as my fellow people of the Leaf had lost sons and daughters.

My cold determination carried me through, until we were back in the Tower, back in the office of Hatake Kakashi. Then I just found myself pale and tired and uncertain and fearful of the little boy whose hand I’d held. What would he tell his brother? What would he say to my Lord of _Konoha_? There was so much he could speak that could be the death of me and those I cared for… Everything from Funeno daring to grip my shoulder, to Sai weeping in my arms, to dozing with Naruto in the grass, to Kiba… Kiba who I still didn’t fully know what he’d said before I’d arrived to intervene.

The possibilities left me dizzy and I swayed into the doorframe, as Sasuke ran with outstretched arms toward his brother. “_Nii-san_!” he burst out, forgetting all about me.

“Sasuke,” Itachi said, meeting his brother, first with a hand in the younger’s hair and then with an arm around his shoulders, as the elder Uchiha went to one knee, to examine his sibling with red, intent eyes.

“Still lingering in doorways, Umino Iruka?” The dry query drew my eyes on the man who had been occupying the back of my mind for much of the day. He still sat as he always seemed to, behind his slab of a desk, with his head in his hand and a dull amusement playing behind his expressionless ennui. “If you have nothing better to do than stand there, why don’t you have a seat?”

The words were accompanied by a rising wall of _chakra_, which flexed and shoved me into the room. Face flaming and heart doing a skittering dance, I all but ran to the couch and dropped unto it, afraid of what would happen if I did not. That _chakra_… despite the dull humor in Hatake Kakashi’s tone, that _chakra_ did not feel pleased. It did not feel exactly angry, as it had when Uchiha Tajima had been in this room, but it was not settled, either, and I worried my lip till it bled, wondering what he would do, what would happen next.

_Please, oh please, don’t lock me away. Don’t keep me away from Naruto, now. That would be worse than never having let me see him at all._

I _wanted_ to say it and I _didn’t_ and I wasn’t sure what was expected of me in the moment, but, blessedly, the man who owned me took care of that for me. Humming a bored sound, my Lord _Hokage_ tilted his head toward his ever-present caretaker and my young companion of the day and aimed what amounted to a smile with him at the boy.

“Did you enjoy your time at the Leaf Academy, Sasuke?” he asked, the skin around his eyes crinkling in that way I associated with mirth. If the man ever felt true humor. It was hard to tell what expression hid behind his cloth mask and apparent, constant boredom.

Sasuke’s face went sour, at the mention of the Academy, and my stomach dropped, blood leaving my face in what must have been a show of how terrified I was. A show I knew both the Lord of _Konoha_ and his bodyguard saw. “It was boring, Kashi-_sama_,” the little one blurted. “All Iruka-_sensei_ did all day was sleep and the pre-_genin_ aren’t very good at _ninjutsu_, so Iruka-_sensei_ had to spar with me, and he isn’t very good at _ninjutsu_, either.”

The statements left me hot and cold with horror and flaming embarrassment and relief, all at once. _That_, he’d said _that_ and _only that_. No mention of Daikoku or Kiba or Naruto… I would be humiliated over and over again, so long as others were kept safe. _You can tear me apart, but please, please don’t hurt them…_

I felt my skin alternating between angry red flush and sickly white and, in the end, I buried my face in my hands, to hide the plea in my mind behind trembling fingers. _What do you want from me?_ I wondered, but Hatake Kakashi still did not tell me that.

“Is that so, Sasuke?” he drawled, amusement tinting the words to an impossibly wrenching note. “Well, Umino Iruka does seem to be having trouble staying awake, of late. Perhaps I should consult with his physician about his sleeping patterns.”

For some reason _that_ brought another flush to my face, and I found myself moaning behind my hands, remembering how recently I’d spent a night sleeping naked under the _Hokage_ robe on this couch. That and what had happened beforehand. I could still feel the need growing in me, as I hid my face in the armrest with Hatake Kakashi’s toy in me. The need that had led to the man who owned me joining me on the couch and fucking me with the plug, his free hand resting in the small of my back. _That_ memory was all too clear and it did strange things to my head I didn’t want to consider right then. I didn’t want to remember I’d enjoyed what had happened because then I would have to again try and understand just what was wrong with me.

_You’re just a dirty whore who needs to be fucked, Iruka._

The words floated free on a wing of memory and hot, stinging tears pricked the backs of my dry eyes. _Stop it, I know. Just… stop._

Lost in my own internal turmoil, I hardly noticed the shift in the scrutiny on me. Sasuke’s eyes turned red and thoughtful and his high voice rang out, after a moment.

“Iruka-_sensei_ has a physician? Is he sick?”

“Iruka-_sensei_?” Itachi questioned, quietly. “Why do you keep calling him that, Sasuke?”

“Everyone calls him that, _Nii-san_,” the little one pronounced with his particular arrogant flounce. “And I told him to stop calling me Sasuke-_sama_. I am not a _sama_!”

My Lord of _Konoha_ chuckled dryly at this and I dared a look at him from between my fingers. I could only imagine my eyes were red, bloodshot, and swimming with water, given how much I had already cried, but the intensity of the _assessment_ and _focus_ in that gaze told me the man didn’t care. That he again liked what he saw.

“That you’re not, Sasuke,” he said, keeping those divergent eyes on me, the set of his face once again expressionless but hard in a way that made me want to curl into a small ball and hide away. _Please, oh please_, kept running through my mind, but the Lord of _Konoha_ didn’t hear or stop. “Boring or not, are you willing to continue keeping an eye on my favorite _Konoha-nin_ for me, Sasuke?”

“Yes, Kashi-_sama_.” The little one puffed out his chest, preening under this request from his _shogun_, and the man offered the boy one more possibility of a smile, before dismissing him and his brother both.

“I appreciate that, Sasuke. Now, since you obviously haven’t learned anything useful today, why don’t you take your brother and Itachi can teach you some _ninjutsu_? I want some time alone with my favorite _Konoha-nin_.”

Itachi stood and took his brother’s hand, at the words, intoning, “Yes, my _shogun_,” and my stomach dropped, dizziness permeating my being. _What… are you going to do?_ rang through me because it was obvious Hatake Kakashi would do _something_ and I wasn’t sure I had the capacity to handle that.

But there was nothing I could do to stop it. “Good-bye, Iruka-_sensei_!” Sasuke called and I did my best to smile at him and wave a farewell before the door closed and I was alone with the man who owned me and crying before he even reached me, wrapped me in his _chakra_, and looked down at me with considering, divergent eyes.

“You seem to have charmed Itachi’s little brother, Umino Iruka,” he said, tone disinterested drawl, a finger of the _chakra_ pressing my arms to my sides and holding me firm, from waist to shoulders, tilting my chin up, so he could see my face and streaming eyes. “I trust you stayed out of trouble, while you were out of the Tower?”

Unable to nod or articulate anything sensible, I garbled some variation on _yes, yes I stayed out of trouble_, and my Lord _Hokage_ watched me with merciless, bored interest. “I came back,” I sobbed, after a moment. “I came back.”

“A wise course of action, Umino Iruka,” he stated, the curls of _chakra_ unwinding from around me. “Now, as you seem to be overwhelmed, you can sit there and work on being quiet.”

The last was said as he turned away with a flash of apathy in his eyes, and I slumped into the cushions, attempting to repress my sobs, knowing what he meant was I should shut up. It wasn’t hard to mistake _that_ command. I’d head it often enough, even before this particular silver-haired bastard had come into my life. So, I sat still and stifled my will to cry, even if that meant grinding my lip between my teeth, until it bled, and I gripped the edge of the couch so hard my nails scratched the leather.

All the while, I expected some command to take my clothes off, to perform, to _do something_, but no command came, and in time I was just sitting there. Sniffing and looking around. Casting shy glances at the man who owned me, who sat with his chin propped on his knuckles and a distracted air about him. A pen skipped in his fingers, and I wondered what he was doing. What work kept him like this day and night, so sometimes he did not sleep or eat? What were the things motivating Hatake Kakashi?

Perhaps if I could figure that out, I would know what to do with myself, but I didn’t know, couldn’t fathom, and so just found myself restlessly sitting and shuffling about, glancing out the window and back to the man who owned me and wishing I understood _any of this_!

My uneasy movements and repetitive, fidgety glances seemed to wear on my _Hokage_. After a time, he hummed a dissatisfied sound and looked up at me with mitch-matched eyes that locked me in place, though he hadn’t used the least amount of _chakra_ to hold me still. “Are you bored, Umino Iruka?” he inquired.

“N-no, _Ho-hokage-sama_,” I stammered. “Only… not sure what I should do…”

The man made another sound and picked something up off his desk he offhandedly tossed at me. “I don’t have time to play with you today, pet. But leaving you unattended only seems to get you into trouble, so perhaps you could behave awhile and entertain yourself.”

I found myself blinking at the words, a flush of half angry embarrassment creeping up my face at the implications and the thing I now held in my hands. A book. An _Icha, Icha_, of all things. But then, what kind of books did I _expect_ the man to read?

Swallowing a thick _something_ clogging my throat, I let my attention turn to the tiny piece of escape thrown my way and the knowledge at least Hatake Kakashi didn’t have time to _play_ with me right now, and tried my best to be still and unnoticed, hoping perhaps I could manage getting back to my room without my clothes having to come off first. But being quiet and still and uninteresting was not easy and the book in my hands only made it harder. I had never had much liking for _Icha, Icha_ and only indulged in the series a few times, making what I was reading all the more unexpected.

Squirming. I was squirming with my face heating before I could finish the first chapter and maybe I was even making little, uncomfortable sounds because somewhere in the middle of it, Hatake Kakashi was sighing and addressing me, his voice droll. “Is there a problem, Umino Iruka?”

Something strangled came out of me and the book dropped out of nerveless, startled fingers. I attempted to catch it but was too slow and another, seemingly infuriated sigh came from the man who owned me. “It seems you have trouble keeping yourself busy, Umino Iruka.”

Shivering now, I let my eyes drag over the man and found him appraising me with that same look of almost displeasure he’d had on when I’d first come back with Sasuke. And I realized he wasn’t _upset_ with me. Wasn’t _angry_ for anything I had done or might have done. He was discontented I had been gone at all, and trying to contain himself and-

And what? What? Was he… possibly… jealous of my time? Of the fact I had been away?

He had been so reasonably, well, not _kind_, not that, but _human_ after I had fallen asleep on his couch and then spent the following morning with him. Eating and sitting quietly in the sun because I had been so worn from crying I hadn’t even had the energy to move, much less realize until this moment he hadn’t had me take my clothes off and perform for him. I started at the fact, at the knowledge I _had_ seen one day where my Lord _Hokage_ had not humiliated me on his couch.

And now… now he was looking at me as if he were having a hard time knowing I had been away from him all morning, despite the facts he’d had no use for me and his watcher had told him I’d done nothing to raise his ire. What was I meant to do with that? What was I to do with it or the building tangle of feelings that had begun the moment I’d defended this man to my fellow clerical-_nin_?

_I don’t want to _feel_ this way about this man._

Not that I had much time to sort out anything I felt with the Lord of _Konoha_ looking at me relentlessly and twiddling his pen between his fingers. “If you are having difficulty entertaining yourself, then you can make yourself useful and entertain me, instead.”

I swallowed and, feeling numb, reached to retrieve the book from the floor. “What do you want me to do?” I whispered, my lips heavy and cold and slow, as I tried to get the words out.

“Use your imagination, Umino Iruka,” he replied, painfully digging at me with the statement. “Or did you not find anything inspiring in that book?”

It was supposed to rankle me, to make my flaming anger rise and spur me on to do something, the way I had when the _Akatsuki_ lords were in this room, but for some inane reason, I didn’t feel goaded. I felt cold and sickly-thoughtful. Much of me regretted my stupidity and inability to _just sit_ and _not fidget_, but the rest of me was wandering places I wished it wouldn’t.

Head hanging, I stood up and silently reached for the zipper on my flak jacket, but my hands faltered and I just stood there, lost in thought and hating myself for it.

“Do you have a problem, Umino Iruka?”

The question drew my eyes up, but the sight of Hatake Kakashi recording me with spinning _tomoe_, studying me in that way, which undressed me to the bone, did not inspire the same terror or disgust I was used to.

“No, _Hokage-sama_,” I murmured, and began taking my clothes off. But, for the first time, feeling heat in my cheeks at the probable stupidity and awkwardness of what I was doing, I worked through the actions slowly, attempting to make the thing _look good_, as I did it, and hating myself for that, as well, all the while.

_What are you doing, Iruka? Just what do you think you’re doing? What the hell is wrong with you?_

I squeezed my eyes shut, and let the last piece of cloth fall away biting my lip, because I didn’t understand what I was doing or why. All I knew was he had hurt me. He’d used me and abused me and treated me like I was a worthless thing to be toyed with… But he had also let me sleep uninterrupted and unreprimanded. He’d covered me when I was cold and he had no reason to. He was keeping Tsunade and so many other _Konoha-nin_ alive, when his own lords called for their deaths. He was keeping hope in the Leaf alive with them, whether he knew it or not. And he had let me go back to Naruto and shown me Shin’s file. And I didn’t understand any of it.

_So, you think he deserves a show? A reward for a few _nice_ actions? Don’t be a fool, Iruka. Whatever his reasons are, they aren’t motivated by kindness._

“Open your eyes, Umino Iruka.”

I started and my eyes flew open and wide because there was Hatake Kakashi _right there_, bare millimeters from me, taking my breath away and making me take a step back, reflectively. But the couch was there and it caught at the back of my knees and I would have fallen if he hadn’t taken hold of my arm and pulled me forward again. His touch there and gone but enough to fasten me still, staring up at him with startled eyes and parted lips, as I struggled to breathe. Whatever I _thought_, whatever my _Hokage deserved_, he was fascinated by me and the primal _interest_ in his disparate eyes held me spellbound and made me weak in the knees.

_Oh _kami_, oh hell, what are you going to do with me? _The thought was frantic but, “_Ho-hokage-sama_,” was all I managed to say.

The man’s expression didn’t change but his hand went up to grip my ponytail and use it to angle my face up even further, so he could see me, see and note the moment my heart rate kicked up and pulsed in my throat. His _chakra_ bubbled around us, but didn’t touch me, didn’t make contact with me or manipulate me like a marionette on strings, as it could have.

“Finish what you were doing, if you were going to do it without being told, Umino Iruka.”

He let go of my hair and I took a more careful step back, sat down heavily, but intentionally, on the couch. Exactly what had I been planning for this point? Despite what I had been doing for the last week, I had no idea how to _perform_. My experiences with willing sex were rather limited, and none of it prepared me for this. None of my partners had really _wanted_ me or to _watch_ me. Quick and over had been the rule, and I was lost, so lost.

Maybe he saw it, the wandering confusion, but not unwillingness to do as asked, covering my face. The man had always been able to rip me apart and he had riffled through my mind, maybe he _knew_ or at least _understood_. Whatever it was, for once, he helped me in a way that didn’t leave me bleeding and wondering how often an unpleasant medical-_nin_ would need to put me back together.

“Put your legs up on the couch,” he said, sitting on the end of said piece of furniture opposite me, never breaking eye contact. When I had, when I had listened to him and found myself leaning on the armrest, facing him with a pale face and a tremble all along my body, he lay one finger on the bone of my ankle and used it to apply pressure to my leg, easing my thighs apart, without even touching them. “Now, spread your legs slowly and put your hand between them,” he said, all the while, and I felt myself following suit on some sort of reflex. I did not _have_ to do it, but I did and I mewed a little sound when my hand touched myself and I realized how hard I was. My fingers felt like sweet relief and I hadn’t even known I _needed_ relief. “Good,” he cooed, seeing my face flush pink and my fingers tightening around my shaft, as I bit my lip to hold back other sounds.

The surprise of it and the sudden understanding of how much I needed to get off had me shaken and further confused and more than anything horrifyingly hot. My fingers stroked fast and beaded, shimmery pre-cum coated my hand, easing the slide of it. This thing I was doing with Hatake Kakashi greedily taking me in.

It was my _Hokage_ who changed the pace, altered the tempo of the moment. “Slow, Umino Iruka,” he said, sliding the back of his finger over the protrusion of my ankle bone, then taking it away, only to wrap his hand around my other ankle, the one closer to the backrest, his hold light but firm and real, as his hand had been in the small of my back that other time, the last time we had done this and I’d been forced to admit I’d enjoyed myself with this man.

I had to admit it again, even as I whimpered and slowed my motions to a torturous pace, which only heightened my arousal and left me panting, my eyes streaming with overwrought tears and non-understanding of this moment. I worked myself and Hatake Kakashi recorded the way my body trembled and twitched, memorized how it responded to everything I did and how it bucked when I finally came and cum coated my inner thigh and my belly.

I collapsed fully, moaning, when it was done. My soiled hand resting and shivering on my pelvis and my head pillowed on the armrest, as I blinked back tears, trying to focus my blurry eyes.

“You’re quite pretty when you stop holding back, Umino Iruka,” my _Hokage_ said, his hold on my ankle not loosening. “Perhaps, I should leave you to your own devices more often.”

The words pulled a distressed sound out of me and I covered my face with an arm, where I could cry weak, confused tears without him seeing. I had no actual hope he would _let_ me hide, but I was so overwrought with everything that had happened in this day, in the short, yet unendingly long week I had known this man beside me on the couch, I couldn't stop myself.

“Umino Iruka,” my owner murmured, tracing up my side with a line of _chakra_ that chased a flinching shudder through me before the insubstantial wisp of life energy. A whimper escaped me, and Hatake Kakashi sighed again. The living tendril of _chakra_ moved to grasp my wrist and pulled my arm gently away from my face, allowing him a full view of my turmoil, as my lacks and shaking legs offered him a view of other things. The whole of it just left me quietly weeping fat, sticky tears. The Lord of _Konoha_ watched me with one dark, unreadable eye and one that spun red. Still intimately recording me and this moment for whatever internal reasons he had. Tired, so very tired and so enmeshed in thoughts and questions and unanswerable emotions, I just lay and let him.

_Why? Just tell me why…_ bubbled up along with my tears but I didn’t say it and I wondered what my _Hokage_ would do now. He was so close to me and he had not released his hold on me or moved away, as he so often did when he was done with me, and that left me incomprehensibly wondering if he _was not_ done with me. _What are you going to do? W-what-_

“Were your pre-_genin_ pleased to see you, Umino Iruka?”

This simple question completely unwound me and why shouldn’t it? A thing, so like normality in this utterly insane moment. It made me want to weep harder and my face crumbled, as I turned it to the side and cried onto the armrest.

“Yes. Yes, they were pleased to see me, _Hokage-sama_,” I choked out, uncertain how to express just _what_ my pre-_genin_ had _felt_. “They were all so scared. They thought- thought…”

“Thought what, Umino Iruka?” my Lord of _Konoha_ asked, his hand on my ankle tightening, until the pressure threatened pain and I understood explicitly he could break my bones with that hold. Snap them, like kindling, and leave me at the mercy of Kabuto to put me back together.

“That I was hurt.” The words were strained and thick in my throat and I just sobbed after them, letting out the emotions I’d been carrying all day. It was what he wanted in this, yet another of those _personal_ moments, and I let him have it because what could I do to stop him?

The man sat and watched me, until my sobs mellowed to hiccupping, dry-eyed things, and then he leaned forward slightly, unchanging face assessing. “And are you.” His free hand reached out and met my skin, a thing hot and present on my inner thigh, making me gasp and whine, as a single finger slid upward, catching and smearing away a thin line of cum. “Hurt?”

He had never touched me so much or with such focus and care before and it left me reeling and terrified and my thoughts skittered about on the pounding of my heart and the unwelcome throb between my legs, where I threatened to grow hard again. I knew what he _meant_, and equally knew I didn’t know how to answer. I could not lie, and yet… yet.

“No.” It was a whine as well, and I covered my face with my hands, shuddering and wanting this to be over. I did not have the energy for this and I was tired and why did he want to know what I thought of our time together? What did it matter to him?! _Stop, just stop_, part of me pleaded and more words tumbled out of me, thoughtlessly, desperate that he should ask me no more questions and send me away. “I haven’t been hurt, _Hokage-sama_.” _Not directly, not simply for the _pleasure_ of it._ “But I was just ripped out of their lives and they were so scared. Especially Naruto, he thought-”

A little scream tore out of me and I took my hands from my face to cover my mouth, even as I moaned helpless, hopeless, unbelieving things into my palms, and fingers, my eyes locking on Hatake Kakashi’s face and a looping refrain playing in my head.

_Oh _kami_, oh hell, oh please, no, no, no, no!_

“Naruto?” the Lord of _Konoha_ demanded, squeezing my ankle, until I let out another little scream of pain.

“My child!” I sobbed, crying, all over again. “Please, he’s all alone, he hasn’t done anything, please-”

“You don’t have a child, Umino Iruka.” He was leaning over me suddenly, both divergent eyes stormy, somehow angry, and that left me cold and weeping out hot tears.

“My adopted child. Please.”

Another hard squeeze applied to that place he held me. “We found no records of you adopting a child.”

I shook my head, letting it roll side to side on the armrest, burning runnels of salt water streaking down my face, unable to express to him Naruto and I had never bothered with papers and appropriate channels. That we’d never had to. That everyone in the village had turned a blind eye to the _Jinchūriki_ child who’d already killed his mother in childbirth, long before his father died, and no one had cared dependable, reliable Iruka-_sensei_ decided to take care of him. No one would have cared if he’d died right along with his father. There was no way I could articulate any of that, so I just lay there under him, feeling the pain from where he gripped my joint and the searing appraisal of his eyes. I knew I was pleading with him, begging him for things I didn’t even know and I was slowly losing myself. _Knew it_, but couldn’t stop it.

What had I done? Just what had I done? This was my fault, everything was my fault, and there was no way I could fix it, no way I could make up for it.

“Please, please, please, he’s all alone-”

“Stop.”

There was a sharp pain down in my leg and I cried out at it, but it grounded me, pulled me back into the moment and left me just breathing and crying softly and looking up at Hatake Kakashi, this man gazing at me with a hard, cold expression behind his cloth mask. “_Ho-hokage-sama_.” The words were cracked, but at least they were coherent and something revolved in the man who owned me’s eyes at those words.

“If I let you go back to your son in the evening, what would you do, Umino Iruka?”

This soft spoken question, so at odds with his hard face, rocked me and something plaintive and needy and aching rose up in my chest and came out of my throat on a kind of whimper I’d only heard in the_ Konoha Byōin_ the few times I had gone there as a volunteer to assist at the beds of the injured and dying, during the worst of the wars. Or, worse than this somehow, the times I’d lain in a bed myself, admitted to the Tree Leaf Hospital and unable to sleep at night for the swimming memories playing in my head. The pain of fresh stitches in my face rose like bile at that sound I made. Dark nights and the tug of surgical thread over the bridge of my nose and tears shed where no one could see me.

“Anything. I’ll do anything you want.” This was sob again, and maybe all the more so because I knew it to be true. The memories of nights in the Hospital, under the care of medical-_nin_, who talked in whispers and averted their eyes, when I caught them looking at me, only made it all the more true and vivid for me. I would do _anything_ for this man, if he allowed me to go home to Naruto at night. If he wanted me to moan like a whore for him, I would. I _did not care_, so long as Naruto was safe.

“I want to meet Naruto.” His grip constricted on me and I seemed able to feel every nuance of it, every tiny millimeter of his skin along mine. Feel the way his fingers wrapped my delicate bones and curved around my medial malleolus, once again aware he could crush that. Reduce that base of my tibia to splitters without effort, with only an ever-so-slight flex of that hand on me.

And yet, I still had it in me to resist _this_ demand. Because it left me cold and hot and reeling. _Meet Naruto, why do you _want_ to meet my Naruto?_ “What do you want from Naruto?” I let out of a clogged throat, the words hardly more than garble. _I won’t let you hurt him…_

Hatake Kakashi’s face was stormy above me, his _sharingan_ tinting my tears and eyesight red. “Nothing,” the word almost seemed to be growled from between clenched teeth and the hand on me to squeeze spasmodically with an anger I couldn’t understand. A sizzling, agitated, boiling _chakra_ rose up around us, like disgust and turmoil and outright _rage_, but none of it directed at me, as the man who owned me completed his thought. “Only from you, Umino Iruka.”

I bit my lip and jerked my head up and down in submission and agreement. “Anything. I’ll do anything you want.”

This second admission was followed by a moan because he was still compressing my ankle and that enveloping wall of _chakra_ was suffocating me, leaving me lightheaded and weak, though something in me said he didn’t _mean_ for that. He just couldn’t _help it_.

_Why? Why… are you so angry? Why… Does it matter to you I have a son? Does it?_

He did not answer and would not answer and it didn’t matter. What he said to me, pain shooting up my leg and voice intent and all low rumble, stole all ability to care from me. “You will go home to your son every evening, Umino Iruka. Every morning you will come back to the Tower, so that Sasuke can go with you to the Academy. Every afternoon you will return with Sasuke to the Tower and stay with me, until I dismiss you in the evening. Is that understood, Umino Iruka?”

“Yes!” I gasped, incomprehensible things swimming through my head. “Whatever you want.”

“I want to meet your Naruto, Umino Iruka. You will stay here in the Tower tonight and take me to meet him tomorrow evening.” Another spasming squeeze to my ankle. “I want nothing from your son, but you will serve me, Umino Iruka.”

There was no way I could speak and nothing I could say I had not torn out of my soul already, so I lay there and cried with him over me and his _chakra_ blanketing us. Expecting he would have me now, anticipating he would take whatever inexplicable thing he wanted, now that he was more than ever assured I would not resist. Would lay and take it.

But the only thing Hatake Kakashi did was tighten a curl of _chakra_ around my chest and throat, so that he could make me look at him and ensure I _listened _to him. “Do you understand me, Umino Iruka?”

“Y-yes, _Ho-hokage-s-sama_.”

Suddenly, I was alone on the couch, and both my _Hokage’s_ hand and _chakra_ had left me. Left me curling in on myself and weeping at all of this, this strangeness, as he paced away from me and offered one last command, when his back was to me. “Stop crying, Umino Iruka.”

His tone was, once again, bored and disinterested and his _chakra _had dissipated, vanishing into nothing. And I tried, I tried my best to stifle my tears and smoother my sobbing, but it was all too much and I could do nothing but hide myself away in the backrest and press the heels of my hands over my mouth, so Hatake Kakashi would not hear me. I was aching inside. Aching from soul to body and so confused only one thing made sense in my muddled world.

_Naruto. I’m coming home._


	7. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi and me both: You cry too much, Umino Iruka.
> 
> Also me: And I will make him *cry!*
> 
> "cough" But on a more serious note, I'm sorry this chapter is so late. I really hoped to have one chapter out a month, but life, as life so often does, happened hard these last few months. I can't say all of it was bad, there have been some really great moments over the last months, but all of it has been time consuming. And so this chapter is late and next chapter will be too. But! The chapters will come. No more year long breaks with this work.
> 
> If you're happy to see this chapter posted, be sure to thank [Horizon_moon_eclipse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Horizon_moon_eclipse), who very kindly let me stress text her when the smut wasn't working, and who gave me the inspiration to fix it and make it better than I ever could have on my own. I appreciate you so much, Horizon dear.
> 
> Until next time, wonderful people!

I woke up shivering in my bed in the _Hokage_ Tower, the next day. Shivering because I knew I would never have to sleep there again. Never, so long as I did as Hatake Kakashi wanted and he kept his word. But… strangely, in a place in me I did not want to admit to, I understood my _Hokage_ had always kept his word. No matter what else he had done, the man had not lied at any point in my memory.

But I did not want to think of this. Did not have the energy for it. I had dropped off into exhausted and mentally wrung sleep after a fast and searing shower, and I could remember nothing but a fuzzy blankness in my dreams. Nothing, but comforting black, despite the fact I had taken none of the white powder spilled across my end table. I’d just been at an end and tired and I’d slept. Thank whatever gods there might be, I’d slept.

And now… now in the moment of waking, all I could feel was my body shaking and the smoothness of my sheets under me and the warm weight of the blankets over me. I hadn’t even put anything on to sleep, and the full length of me only felt soft and floating, as I curled loosely into a ball under the blankets and drew the pillows down with me into the dark under the covers. It was like I was wrapped in warm, dark water and nothing was real and nothing was solid and nothing could harm me, and just wanted it to last a little longer, before I had to face the day.

Because, deep down in the dimly waking, rational parts of me, I knew I had to slide and slip out from beneath the blankets in this room. I had to face the cold that would make my body shake in a whole new way. I had to dress and I had to find Sasuke. I had to go to the Academy and, when I had struggled through another day pretending to teach lessons I wasn’t prepared for, I had to return to Hatake Kakashi.

A shiver trailed down my spine and hot, hopeless tears I didn’t even notice or try to resist bubbled in my eyes. There were so many things I had to do, but returning to my _Hokage’s_ office troubled me most. I felt hollow inside at the thought of it. Numb and cold and sick down in the core of me, but unable to do anything but carry on. Walk toward the event, knowing I would get past it and on the other side would be Naruto. I could survive for Naruto, even if doing so left me dirty.

I had been dirty before I ever met Naruto. It would be alright. I could do what needed to be done.

The tears had run dry in my eyes, before I pulled myself from the heat of my too-soft sheets and padded slowly to the bathroom in the velvety dim of the morning. Another shower ran over my skin, washing the tacky remains of my crying from my face, while I stood there, hands braced on the tiles, staring absently at the wall. The dripping and the rush of the water all I heard, until I turned off the stream and then it was only the dripping. _Drip. Drip_, the water running down my body and falling off my skin and the damp clumps of my hair, as I stood there and tilted my head back to look at the ceiling.

It should not hurt so much, I decided, wiping the lingering drops away and pulling my clothes on over skin turned red from water I hadn’t noticed was too hot. It shouldn’t, but heading out the door of the room I would never have to stay in again, I realized it did. I had thought I was done being someone’s plaything years ago and the final submission on Hatake Kakashi’s couch, with his hand circling my ankle and his blunt _chakra_ pressing me down, left me empty and tired.

Just so very tired…

My steps were labored and plodding on my way to the _Hokage’s_ office, and finding an impatient and frowning Uchiha Sasuke outside the doors of the man who owned me only slowed me further. Was I not even to be allowed in to see the Lord of _Konoha_ and gage his mood? Sasuke’s taking my hand and pulling me away with, “Come on, Iruka-_sensei_!” was confirmation enough, and I could only stumble after him with a backward look at Hatake Kakashi’s carved doors.

_Are you angry?_ The words were a small ache in my soul and they brought the sting of tears to my eyes, but I couldn’t cry and I wouldn’t cry, not with Sasuke’s hand in mine and that young person was tugging me along, out into the light and the day in _Konoha’s_ streets. So, I bit my lip and I struggled to keep up and, in some ways that was a blessing.

It was almost as though you could not think of being someone’s toy, while the sun caressed your face and a small boy stood on tiptoe, to peer into vending stalls, while he held your hand tight in his. As though… you could not run over and over what it was to belong to someone else, as your heart turned over with the realization the _Akatsuki_, the wielder of the _sharingan_, meant to be guarding you, was tilting his head and looking forlornly, near wistfully, at colorful stuffed animals. The expression on his upturned face saying those childish things were both lovely and constantly out of reach. The soft, pounding ache in your heart was hard to consider when that same boy caught you observing him, his expression turning sour, in the instant he spun on his heels and marched you off again.

At those moments, I couldn’t hold thoughts of Hatake Kakashi, or what it was he wanted of me, in the forefront of my mind or handle them properly, any more than I could keep them focused, once I set food on the Academy’s grounds. Naruto was waiting for me on the steps, and when I came into view, he ran crying into my arms, his clear blue eyes wet and his hands fisting into the fabric of my clothes.

“Oh, Naruto, Naruto,” I murmured into his hair, holding him tight to my chest and unaware of when I had even dropped to my knees to capture his rushing body in my arms. Unaware of much, as my numb form walked with him into the Academy, with Sasuke at our heels. Ever-present, but oh-so-quiet in his brooding observation.

Daikoku was there, and my pre-_genin_. Kiba, who I watched with trepidation, fearful of his interaction with Sasuke, despite the fact the Uchiha glanced at him, then paid him no mind. Sakura, with her vibrant hair, Shikamaru, who clung to me as much as Naruto, Tenten and Lee, huddled together and too solemn, and Sai… Sai, who I hugged tight to myself and promised, “Everything’s going to be alright, Sai,” all over again, despite how uncertain of that fact I was.

My dear ones… All my dear ones, who had surely been more than half convinced they would never see me again, even or especially after the day before, and who now seemed so totally unsure what to do with me, now that I _had_ come back again. Now that it appeared a little surer I _would_ keep coming back. Daikoku offered me a weary smile, a tight, sorrowful thing, not quite reaching his eyes, and my little ones crowded around me, huddled against my sides, as if feeling me was the only way to completely assure themselves I was real. As one, they pulled me into my classroom and… and…

It was so hard to think of Hatake Kakashi and what we would do together when I returned to his office. Hard… Hard to understand what he would want from me, in more ways than one, when I was surrounded by those who needed me. Standing in front of my pre-_genin_ and attempting to smile and reassure them all was well, even as I did my all to feign teaching them something useful, took so much of me, wore me down to such frayed strands the knowledge of what this, all of this, of what protecting Naruto would cost me, wouldn’t fully form in my mind. It lingered in me, it ached down in my soul. A physical, present thing I could not get away from, yet a thing that wasn’t always at the forefront of my thoughts.

The ache nestled somewhere under my heart and made me slow, made me sad and heavy and listless, and yet, there was just too much to _do_ to _concentrate_ on it, to properly remember why I was aching. There were moments, small moments, when a sharp spike of sudden pain would run me through. Moments when I would remember explicitly _why_, but…

But…

_It’s worth it, it’s all worth it…_

Each time the pain would take me and I would find myself biting my lip and doubling over, a hand rubbing, rubbing at the place above my heart, the thought would bloom across my mind, like the slow, smudged color of a bruise on skin. _It’s worth it. This is worth it._ Thoughts like a slow drift through my mind each time one of my precious ones would press up against me or I met Sai’s tearful eyes or I was able to be near Naruto. Each time I was able to offer comfort of any kind, of even the slightest nature, I knew, whatever happened after this, _this_ was worth it. _Naruto_ and my pre-_genin_ were worth it.

I only needed to get through the impending event, and that would happen of its own accord. I knew it well enough from all that had come before in my life. All one had to do was carry on. Continue forward, and time would carry on and what you dreaded would come and go. It was the same here. Soon enough, I was saying my farewells, embracing all those I loved, and telling them I would see them tomorrow. It was difficult to let Naruto go, despite it all, to say goodbye, but there was more hope in his light blue eyes. Hope he would actually see me tomorrow.

Hope… I saw it in all those around me, and it… it was further pain, in a way I didn’t want to understand. Pain because they believed in me and I was so sore already. So tired and worn away, to the point it felt all my edges were beginning to blur.

Hope.

Hope might have been the reason I didn’t tell Naruto I would be seeing him that evening. Hope, as Uchiha Tajima had said, was a dangerous thing, and I did not want Naruto to hope for a thing that might not come true.

To hope or to fear.

How was I to tell him I was coming home, but coming home in the presence of the man who had torn us apart? Better to go to Hatake Kakashi and see if he would truly keep his word. Better to comfort my son with my presence, than to leave him to fear alone.

_Naruto, it’ll be alright. I promise it will._

Walking with Sasuke at my side, I knew I would do everything in my power to make it so. Everything… anything… I focused on it so intently, so thoroughly, the younger Uchiha tugging at my hand and turning a frown up at me nearly unbalanced me.

“What’s wrong with you, Iruka-_sensei_?” the dark-eyed guardian the man who owned me had placed over me demanded, and all I could do was bite my lip and try to swallow it all back.

“I’m alright, Sasuke,” I assured him, squeezing his fingers gently. “Just tired, everything’s fine.”

The spark of red in his serious eyes told me he did not believe me, that he had long ago learned to see a lie and he did not need the _sharingan_ to do it. He faced me a moment, then turned his attention forward, his fingers tightening on mine in a painful, unexpected way, reminding me this child was not to be trifled with.

“Is something happening between you and ‘Kashi-_sama_?”

The simple, soft-spoken question made me trip, my feet losing their rhythm and my body its equilibrium. How could I ever have forgotten who this was watching me? That he was far more intelligent and had seen far more than anyone of his years had a right? How could I have let that knowledge abandon me after only a single day? He had seen so much more in my _Hokage’s_ office than he should have, no matter how relaxed Hatake Kakashi had allowed himself to appear around the child and no matter how I’d tried to hide the truth from him. The question should not have surprised me, but it did and there was no way to take it back.

Eyes watering painfully, I worried my lip and glanced away. This too was not something you could tell a child, however accustomed to horrors he might be. “Nothing… nothing is wrong, Sasuke.” I followed the words with another squeeze to his hand. “_Hokage-sama…_ he just needs someone to be there with him, and—” I swallowed, running out of words and wondering what it was I could say. What it was Sasuke could understand that would not alter his view of his ‘Kashi-_sama_, the man his brother served so faithfully it took time away from him.

By some grace, I did not need to find the words. As if thoughts of Itachi in my mind had summoned them in his younger brother’s as well, words came slow out of Sasuke’s mouth, almost as if he were dredging them up with the same difficulty I was having.

“_Nii-san… Nii-san_ says ‘Kashi-_sama_ needs looking after. That he’s _shogun_ but doesn’t have anyone to watch out for him, and that’s why my _Nii-san_ has to spend so much time with him. You’re helping _Nii-san_ look after ‘Kashi-_sama_ now, aren’t you, Iruka-_sensei_?”

I found myself swallowing again and disturbingly close to tears. Swallowing because there was a tight, hard lump in my throat, images of a Hatake Kakashi, who did not sleep and showed no interest in food, running uncontrollably through my fractured mentality. Colliding with and overwhelming images of my Lord of _Konoha_ placidly flipping off the entire retinue of his _Akatsuki_, even as they let loose casual threats and only Itachi stood an unflappable and unfazed, _unmovable_ object, proclaiming he was loyal to his _shogun_.

Eyes burning and insinuating tears, I pressed the heel of my free hand over them and choked out, “Yes, Sasuke. I’m helping Itachi watch out for the _Hokage-sama_.”

When I looked down again, the boy at my side had lost all trace of his usual arrogance and spoiled superiority. Thoughtfulness and worry, that had no place on the face of someone so young, creased his brows. “It’s a lot of work, isn’t it, Iruka-_sensei_?”

“Yes, it is, Sasuke.” My voice was still thick, hoarse, but I did my best to smile a watery lift of my lips for him, squeezing his hand one more time. “It’ll be alright.”

So much of me hoped that was true. Hoped it and had so little faith in it. Things had never been alright in my life, except where Naruto was concerned, and now… now I had an uneasy Head of the _Akatsuki_ to _watch over_ and there was so little left of me that I could only hope what remained was enough.

_Oh _kami_, oh hell, let it be enough._

Prayer seldom did me any good. There were no deities to hear, or else, they didn’t care, and I knew it and knew I was alone, when we got back to the _Hokage_ Tower, only for the man who owned me to eye-smile at the younger Uchiha, hear a little report on our day from him, so blessedly short, and send him and his elder brother away together.

Alone.

Alone and with Hatake Kakashi and this time there was no pretense in what he wanted.

“Get on the couch, Umino Iruka,” he flung at me with a flex of _chakra _that knocked me off my feet.

I dropped onto the said piece of furniture, dizzy and surprised, my eyes watering again, as I looked up to see the silver-haired man coming toward me, his eyes blank and blunt and without emotion. Dispassionate, but intent. He paused above me and I felt his _chakra_ crackling all around me.

He could have reached out with that life energy, to keep me that way, to keep me focused on him, and I could have resisted, but I didn’t. I kept my gaze on him and stayed in that position and started taking my clothes off.

Something sparked in his disparate eyes and _tomoe_ revolved at the sight. A dull interest hidden behind mild displeasure and ennui, or something else I couldn’t fathom. I only knew he watched me, and when I was done, he did something he had never done before, commanded something he hadn’t asked for before.

“Take your hair down, Umino Iruka.”

The sheer unexpectedness and oddity of the order left me numb and off balance, but I did it and found myself looking away when it was done. Strangely feeling more naked and exposed and vulnerable, than I ever had before. I wanted to bite my lip and hide away, but his gloved hand coming toward my face stopped me from trying.

It didn’t touch me, but it lingered there, so near my skin I could feel the heat off his fingers. And that… that made me dizzy. The proximity of those pale digits, so oddly delicate and shapely, almost pretty in their own way, and yet also flecked over with little scars left behind by a lifetime of warfare, the closeness of those fingers made my world spin and haze into the tingling, watercolor softness of dissociation. I did not feel present in my body. It was far away from me and it was all I could do to understand I was trembling and somewhere, far away, my hands were gripping the soft leather of the couch with enough force my nails scratched at it, leaving little crescent scars on the plush, smooth surface beneath my near senseless legs. What was real to me was the fast beating of my heart. It fluttered like butterfly wings in my chest and rose up my throat, to choke me right alongside tears I did not feel building, but which were there all the same.

All because of a hand near my face. Near, but not _touching_ me, not _assaulting_ me. Just… hovering there.

_Why… Why won’t you… just touch me?_ The thought was a wisp through my wavering mind. One that faded in and out, as I attempted to take a hold of it and to place myself in reality. _Why?_ I asked it internally, raising my eyes to those of the man above me, my lip between my teeth and the tears I hardly noticed spilling across my vision, turning it bright and iridescent. Swimming… The world was swimming around me and all I could do was wonder what it was Hatake Kakashi saw when he looked at me like this. What about me fascinated him so much? There was nothing _fastening_ about me, nothing worth noting… So, why?

_What_ and _why_, they both held me paralyzed because there had to be a reason he wasn’t just getting on with what must surely be his intention, now that he had me here, now that he was fully assured there would be no resistance. But my Lord of _Konoha_ had never explained himself to me and never would, and he just left me _there_. Aching and cold and confused, when all I wanted was this moment to pass.

_Naruto._

My son was waiting for me on the other side of my time with Hatake Kakashi, and the only way to him was _forward_ and if the man who owned me wouldn’t advance this instant in time, than—

_What? What, Iruka? What are you honestly going to do?_

Sob seemed to be the answer.

I was so very numb and tired, and I had ached dully for so much of this day, everything merely overflowed and all I could do was sit there. Sit there, trembling, while thick, heavy, _messy _weeping crumbled my face and left my chest tight and burning. And yet, it was a strange kind of crying. An almost silent form of sobbing, full of that dry ache I had experienced all through the day. Full of _that_ and the understanding I didn’t want to feel this anymore. I did not want to just exist in a nothingness of waiting any longer.

I couldn’t.

But what… could I…

Do…

A little breath escaped me, as I realized there _was_ something I could do. A small, almost negligible thing I could do, which would alter the flow of this interaction. It was a startled exhale, like a gasp, and I found myself tracing the length of the man’s delicate, scarred fingers upward. Up, over his arm, and past his shoulder, to his masked face. That inexplicable, expressionless face.

_Are you… angry?_

The familiar thought trailed through my mind, but whatever hid behind his mitch-matched eyes nothing of it showed though. Blank. Unfathomable. And merciless in his slowness. The uncertainty of it all made me want to sob all over again, to break apart, but I did something else, instead. That tiny something I knew I _could_ do, but had never dared to do before, had never thought to even _attempt_ before, and the shock of it surprised even me.

Face still damp, still crumpled in dull, aching pain, lip caught in my teeth, yet again, my hand let go of the cushion it had scarred and reached up to capture that of the man who had brought _Konoha_ to its knees. Bronze fingers caught pale, and Hatake Kakashi stiffened at the contact, disparate eyes widening. For an infinite moment everything held still. Stood stunned, as I realized I’d shocked the man. It was several breaths before he attempted to tug his hand away, only for me to hold on. Eyes squeezing closed, I pulled back on his hand and pressed it to my cheek, nuzzled into it, fresh tears sliding from behind my closed lids.

_Please._

My tears were trickling over his fingers and staining the fabric covering his palm, and I wasn’t even aware of it or of what I was pleading for, except that something would happen. That in some way, he would react, even if that reaction was nothing more than a slap across my face, it would be _something_. A step closer to going home, to finding Naruto. I could take pain, if only something would happen. If only—

The soft pad of a thumb brushed slowly over my skin and my eyes flew open, the hand I still held wrapped around the cushion squeezed it tighter, as if I would fall without that grip to keep me stable, to keep me grounded. Because above me, unknowable things were flickering through the Lord of _Konoha’s_ eyes, and his hand, far from moving to cause me pain, had gone to cup my face almost affectionately. The heel of his hand positioned itself along my jaw, near my chin, while his fingers gently framed my ear, and reached back into my hair, so the very tips of them could play along the loose strands. His touch was feather light and I felt myself caught. Just looking up at him.

Stuck, for once, because my _Hokage_ was also trapped in this moment. He seemed utterly bemused by me, his visible features soft and thoughtful, if still unreadable. And _I_ had never been looked at like that before, _except _by this man, in moments like these. The ever-sensible, dependable, but never _desirable_, Iruka-_sensei_ did not garner looks that said the person watching could get lost in what they were seeing, but... Hatake… Kakashi…

A tremble shuddered down my fingers and the hand, which had pressed his to my face, fell away. But, instead of removing his hand from me, my Lord of _Konoha_ just let his fingers drift over my skin. Barely there traces across my jaw and over my lips, as if he’d suddenly been given permission to touch what had entranced him so long and now could not get enough of it. The notion unbalanced me and had my breath catching in my throat. Why had he _needed_ permission? I belonged to him.

Didn’t… I?

The incremental unraveling of that thought was interrupted by my _Hokage_ taking his fingers from my lips and running them through my hair, from the crest of my head, to that place near my ear, where he could cup my face, again. The intent expression framing his eyes, and the sudden flare there pulled a little whining mew out of me and forced a new wave of dizziness through me because of course I had not been breathing, had forgotten _to_ breathe, and now I was swaying into the warmth of that hand on my skin. Leaning into it for support in the same way I gripped the couch cushion, until I scarred it.

The Lord of _Konoha_ noted it, and more things turned over in his eyes, the _tomoe_ in that unusual _sharingan_ spinning in ways I had not seen them move before, and his voice came low and liquid-dark when he spoke. “Lay down, Umino Iruka.” I struggled to obey, but my heart was beating too fast and my limbs slogging through a mixture of cold fear and undeniable arousal. A combination I did not know what to do with.

As much as this moment had made me ache, as much as new, helpless tears were leaking out of my eyes and I was biting my lip to hold back more sobs, I could not lie to myself and say I was not hot and shaking with little bouts of excitement. I could not pretend these realities away.

_You’re such a pathetic, dirty boy, Iruka._

The voice trailed pain through everything I was, and I was openly sobbing when my shoulders and head met the armrest. If the man above me had feelings about that he gave no sign. In repeat of the last time he had wanted me on this couch, Hatake Kakashi sat on the other side of the piece of furniture and studied me.

And, for once, I did not wait for him to speak, did not ask what it was I should do. Tears had a way of making your head ache and feel hollow, of burning your eyes and resting thick and bitter on your tongue, and with all of those now so ordinary and familiar sensations swarming me, with my lip still held firm in my teeth, to smother the hiccupping, heartbreaking sobs working their way up my throat, I let my head fall back, and my knees fall open, and I reached a hand down between my thighs, to find myself.

I was already almost fully hard, and it wasn’t difficult to bring myself the rest of the way, little sounds that weren’t sobs leaking out of me. I hated this, somewhere deep inside. I hated myself for enjoying this and for every time I’d gotten off around my Lord _Hokage_. But I was so tired of resisting, and I’d made promises. Promises to Naruto that we would be a family, and under duress or not, promises to the man sitting opposite me, who I had not looked at since touching myself.

I had promised Hatake Kakashi I would do whatever he wanted.

And this was what he wanted.

This. This, and a more I had yet to think of thoroughly, even now. More I could not let my mind linger on, even in the moment, instead letting my own precum coat my palm, to ease the glide of my hand. Letting my back arch and my legs jerk and shake, while what was left of my crying fit turned to pants and my hair fell in my face because my head was turned away.

I must have looked very _pretty_, must have done my work well and not held anything back, of either my despair or pleasure, must have done something _right_, for once, because the man who I had assumed owned me also did something he had not done before. Put his hands on me in more than just a casual way.

One moment, I was lost in my work, lost in the tears dampening the hair covering my face, the next he was gripping my hips and pulling me toward him, so that I was half in his lap. The movement was not rough, was not sharp or disturbingly fast, but it, and the heat of his hands on my skin, parted my lips in a gasp. Unexpectedly, I was no longer reclined on the armrest. Instead, my head and shoulders pressed into the cushions, while my tailbone and lower regions were cradled on the silver-haired man’s thighs, and my legs shivered to either side of his waist.

I whined slightly, the shiver in my legs spreading down though the rest of me, and my hand stilling just an instant between my legs. But I had come too far, reached the point in physical pleasure where it was hard to stop, and _stopping_ wasn’t what the man holding me wanted, anyway. So, face again falling to the side and tears still slipping out silently into my loose hair, I kept on working my fingers and palm over my swollen part, now, more than ever before, on perfect display for him.

An instant, a heartbeat, and he took one hand from where it had lingered, thumb brushing over the protruding bone of my hip. I expected that hand would push mine away, would reach between my legs and take what he had always wanted, only it did not. The hand trailed down my leg, caressing the skin softly, until it could circle my ankle and use it to bend the leg toward my stomach, ensuring both my legs were well apart and he could see.

It was not an overly comfortable position, but it wasn’t painful, either. Just… strange. All of it was so strange, and my heart beat so fast and part of me wanted to make a little cry of distress. The tears that had been trickling all along, turned to a hot flow over my cheeks and my hair clung there in thick, heavy patches. Yet, I didn’t stop what I was doing. I was close now, and it was better just to finish, so we could carry on. Better to keep up the long, smooth motions that made my heart dance even faster, and what I held firm in my hand to continue leaking pearly fluid through my fingers.

My breathing roughened and it was the only sound in the room, as the Lord of _Konoha_ watched me with utter fascination that I could feel prickling along my skin. How long it lasted, I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think it was long. I could not have lasted long. Not then, not when I was so close and the man beside me held me as he did, the first proof I had that he was really human and as affected by what we did together as I was pressing hard and unmistakable into me. However I looked, Hatake Kakashi thought the view beautiful and that, more than anything else, more than my finger running through my slit, rose a fluttery sensation down deep below my belly, that swelled and burst and left me whining and spasming on his lap.

My hand was wet and slick with the hot proof of how much I had sickly enjoyed the fact the man holding me was hard in his pants, and my hips were twitching down onto his restrained erection, even as the rest of me uncoiled. As my muscles went slack and I felt I was defaulting, sinking down into the cushions and almost succumbing to the drowsy haze that wanted to claim me. I had been tired since waking in the dark of the room I would not have to return to, and now, sated and flushed all over, my body wanted sleep.

But the twitching of my hips proved it also wanted something else, and the hand I hadn’t had to touch myself with dragged to my face and covered my tears because I was crying again, and sure of two things: that Hatake Kakashi would rip my hand away, so he could see me cry and memorize each, minute piece of my agony, and that he would have me now. Have me now that I was really and truly warmed up and laying there, waiting for him to do it. My own body all but asking him for it.

Only, Hatake Kakashi did neither of the things I expected. He let go of my ankle, allowing my trembling leg to fall over the edge of the couch, and he leaned forward over me, bracing himself with a hand to either side of my head, and hovered there a few beats, a few endless moments, as if at any moment he would reach for me and get on with it, and then his heat and his presence were gone from over me. The man was up and striding nonchalantly across the room, his only words to me, “You cry too much, Umino Iruka.”

As unbalanced and confused and dizzy-clumsy as I was, I found myself perching, almost laying on my stomach on the edge of the couch, watching him go, with one hand holding me up and the other pushing my wet, clinging hair out of my face, off my cheeks. And it occurred to my sex and pain clouded mind that he had not taken me. That he had not touched me in any offensive way, and for the first time, he had not forced me to look at him, while I performed for him. He had let me hide, and I wondered if that was repayment for his not having to force me to the point, even as my dull thought process asked in slow, unraveling loops, _Don’t… you… want anything else?_ He had been hard against me, he had _liked_ what he saw, but he hadn’t so much as stroked himself.

I put my head down on the couch and I allowed myself to have a good cry. A thorough, unrestrained bout of weeping, and despite what he had said, Hatake Kakashi did not disturb me. He let me cry myself out and dry, before demanding I clean myself up and dress and take him to see my son.

Now, more than ever, exhausted mentally and physically, I wondered what he could want with my Naruto. But that same exhaustion weighed me down and I knew all I could do was follow through and hope the Lord of _Konoha_, that inexplicable man, so unlike anything I had expected, would keep his word. That, and fight like a cat if he did not. I would fail, I would fall, in such a fight, but it didn’t matter. I would fight all the same, if any harm came to Naruto.

My steps felt heavy and slow when we left his office, and my head was down, so for some time I did not notice that we were alone. Not until we stepped out into the fading, watercolor light of evening spreading through _Konoha_ did the notion it was only my Lord _Hokage_ and I walking together truly sink in. Then, when it did, I found myself pushing my hair away from my face and peering at the man sauntering beside me.

Some part of me, so deep and unconscious I hadn’t even given it higher consideration, had expected he would at least have Itachi with him for this venture into his conquered village. But the somber Uchiha with the stoic face and the burning, red eyes, that only quieted when his brother was near, was nowhere to be found. It was only the two of us and the streets and the pink and orange sky, its colored light staining my home with an apparent mellowness that was no longer felt in its people’s hearts. Sunset light might offer the illusion of all soft edges and quiet, but what Leaf _nin_ walked the streets did so with pinched faces and hurried steps, as _Akatsuki_ watched them and swept by in red and black and the rustle of fabric.

I swallowed and looked away from the silver-haired man at my side, and a wing of hair fell over my face, making me aware, somehow, in my rush to dress and my tiredness, I had forgotten to pull my hair back up into a ponytail. Why the fact should matter as much as it did wasn’t logical, but when you lived your days under stress, logic wasn’t always present, and it was the small things which could break you. The small things which could reduce you to tears. Suddenly, I was blinking back shinning brightness clouding my vision and my hands were shaking, fumbling, as they went to my hair and started combing it back, racking my fingers through the loose, falling strands. I did not even realize my steps had faltered and my feet had stopped moving and I was just standing there, worrying my lip with my teeth, and about to break into full weeping, once again, one hand holding up my hair and the other searching in my pockets for a tie I knew would not be there. Could not be there because I had not collected it from Hatake Kakashi’s office after what we had done together. I hadn’t even known where the small piece of my attire had gone after I’d pulled it out of my hair, at his command, and I could not wrap my tired mind around that any more than I could the fact I was about to come apart in the street, for all to see. It simply was and there was nothing I could have done about it.

It was the dry, dispassionate, yet, half amused voice of my _Hokage_ drifting across my senses that pulled me from the moment. “Looking for something, Umino Iruka?”

His tone was like humming, I decided, my trembling hand going to dash the wetness out of my eyes, so I could actually _see_ him. It was like he was bored and like he was growling and more than anything like a light, thrumming rumble playing along my nerves. They weren’t words meant to mock me, but to calm my agitation and to gain my attention. Because Hatake Kakashi did not wish to play with me, just now. He wanted something else from me and that required my calm and my ease, and so he was being _kind_ to me in that way he had and that had me looking fully at him.

The man had left his _Hokage_ robes behind in the Tower, instead opting to dress as any _shinobi_ who wished to garner limited attention, might. Tight _shinobi_ blues hugged his skin and a flak jacket wrapped his chest, while the band of his _Hitai-ate_ was pulled down to cover his _sharingan_. And here, in the evening light, away from his guardians and his lords, who counseled him to kill what was left of my _Konoha_, he slouched and stood with one hand buried in his pocket and the other outstretched, offering me what dangled from his fingers. My hair tie.

My teeth bit harder into my lip, as I reached out to take the small thing, but there was still no mockery or perversity in his single, gray eye. Only thoughtful appraisal existed in his face, and I swallowed and ducked my head down, while I secured my hair back, carefully tucking in loose wisps that sought to escape and smoothing down rumpled areas. When I was done, he made a noncommittal sound, shoved both of his hands deep into his pockets, and began ambling down the road again. Forcing me to follow, and then to lead. Because I was leading him, of course. Leading him to my home and to my Naruto.

Maybe it was the very fact my emotions were tangled and I was sore and I was sad and I was afraid, down somewhere so far in the core of me it was hard to examine _how_ I was afraid, that my eyes kept darting to him and away. Not that it mattered why. The man walking beside me seemed neither to care for my shy, uncertain scrutiny, or for the attention he was generating, despite his common attire.

There were not many _shinobi_ of the Leaf out in the remains of the day, but those who were noticed us. It was impossible they should not know the man who had brought us all low with a few strokes of a pen, however he was dressed, and my fellow _Konoha-nin_ faltered in their paths and stared for endless moments, before realizing it was dangerous to do so, and turning quickly away.

And this, the way they looked at us with hard expressions and set jaws, pulled some of my flagging energy and wrath to the surface of me. How my countrymen looked at us said, not only had _dependable_ Iruka-_sensei_ taken to walking Uchiha children through the streets of _Konoha_, to the Academy, but he was now strolling beside the very man who had destroyed so many lives. The same Iruka-_sensei_ who had needed the _Godaime Hokage_ to help ease him out of his last embarrassment was now willingly dogging the steps of the man who was using him as a toy.

Though my Lord _Hokage_ did not alter his slow gait, despite the fact I was sure the glances were not lost on him, I felt my cheeks burn and my teeth clench together, even as I felt my back straighten. _Let them look_, played through my mind, almost as it had when I walked with Sasuke, and I held my head high. _Let them look. They have no idea what they are looking _at_, so let them stare._

The thought stayed with me, keeping my heart pounding at a steady, defiant pace and my steps even and measured, all the rest of the way to my apartment. As broken down as I was, I would not let my fellow _Konoha-nin_ see me walking with my head hanging under their disapproval. They knew no more than Iwashi and Yatogo and had no more right to judge than the clerical-_nin_.

It hurt that I was, once again, somehow defending Hatake Kakashi, if only in this simple action, and I wanted to bite my lip and press a hand over the wound I could feel in my heart, it hurt so much. But I would not do that, either, and soon the thought and the pain were driven away by the sight of my apartment in the remnant of the light.

My home… It wasn’t beautiful in any sense. The blocky structure stood dark and stark against the sky. A silhouette done in dirty white walls and old iron balconies, strung out over the outer facade, like ragged, haphazard spider strings. Muted windows broke the monotony, appearing like blank eyes, the lights behind them turned low or blocked out by thick curtains. All of it was gray and dark and an air of neglect and disuse hung about it. But… but…

“Naruto…”

The name tripped off my lips and I didn’t care about who was watching or the Lord of _Konoha_ at my side, I was just stumbling forward, into the aging building and up two sets of stairs. The interior was clean, _shinobi_ did not tolerate filth, no matter how poor their estate, but it smelled of mildew and slow rot. Flakes and splinters peeled from the walls and the runners creaked beneath our feet. Familiar scents, familiar sounds. The fifth step from the top of the second flight would groan if you stepped on it just so, but the next two would be silent if you placed your feet in just such a way your weight was evenly distributed.

I knew it all, just as I knew I lived on the third floor, in the tiny apartment tucked to the back of it all. Oh _kami_, oh hell, I knew that and my body was shivering and tingling when I stopped outside my door. I was home and… and—

Dizzy, I swallowed and swayed. The man who my life belonged to, who I had felt owned me all these days, had remained silent all the way, since handing me my hair tie, and now he seemed to guess my need of something even I couldn’t grasp, and he leaned on the wall to the right of my door, where he would not be seen, his hands in his pockets and one foot pressed to the crumbling wall. A casual, unhurried slouch that neither told me to get on with it or what to do, and instinctually my hand went to my pocket, to thumb my key. I had put it there after I’d woke and showered in the semi-dark of the early day in the room I would never have to return to again. A kind of talisman I could hold and grasp and run my fingers over absently throughout the day, all the way to the Academy and through my time alone with my Lord _Hokage_, as if the very feel and reality of it under my skin would somehow bring me closer to this moment and ensure it would become real.

And yet… now that I stood here, in front of my door, at last in the moment where I could open my own door and find my son and my home again, I found I couldn’t use the key. Couldn’t bring myself to put my talisman to use. It had been a week and more since I used that key. Endless days, that felt like lifetimes, since I had come home to Naruto, and, in fear of the chance I would_ not_ find myself here at the end of this day, I had not told my child I would be coming home tonight. If I just opened my door and went in, he wouldn’t be expecting it and it would frighten him and I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t.

So, I merely stood there, feeling the weight of that little, metal key, so heavy in my hand, the familiar, worn ridges of it digging into my palm, as my hand constricted around it. I could distantly sense the one, gray eye of the man beside me studying me, but he still said nothing and I could hardly consider him, with the door standing solid between me and my son. Slowly, my hand let go of the small piece of metal I had toyed with so much throughout the day and went up to knock on my own door. In an abstract way, I noted it was trembling, that hand. But the fact of it was too far away to think about, just as the sound of my knuckles rapping on the wood were too far away to truly register. They were jarring and rankled on my nerves, but they were also unreal.

I was in the midst of a bout of panic and dissociation and without even knowing I was going to do it, the hand that hadn't touched the door went up to brace me on the door jam, while the other was somehow at my chest, grasping spasmodically at my flak jacket, as if it could clutch my runaway heart and keep it still. My limbs felt numb and I sagged into the door, forehead connecting with the wood and eyes fluttering shut, as I struggled to breathe and a wild, pleading refrain played through my head.

_Naruto. Please. Please be there, Naruto. Please be safe._

Only silence greeted my plea and my knock and it seemed to mock me, as it stretched long and my hand fisted in the fabric of my clothes and my forehead ground against the grainy wood. Somehow I was fighting back tears and my lip tasted bloody between my teeth and I was begging somewhere in my head, the hand holding me up going to knock again and a heady panic spreading through my system. _Oh _kami_, oh please, Naruto!_

But before the Lord of _Konoha_ could move to interfere or I could bring myself to use the key weighing me down and open the door separating me from what lay inside, a tiny voice spoke from just on the other side of the thin wood holding me up, coming out wavering and afraid. “Who… Who's there?”

I couldn’t stop the tears then and I didn’t try, just squeezing the material fisted in my hand and choking out a strained, “It’s me, Naruto. I’m home.”

There was a tick after I said it. A miniscule moment of time in which nothing moved in the dimming light but the dust motes dancing and turning in the air. And then there was a cry from the other side of the door and the sounds of the locks being hurriedly undone and my son was wrenching the door open, pulling it inward, and I was falling forward to enfold him in my arms as he wailed my name. “Iruka-_sensei_!”

Somehow, in some thoughtless way, we had come together just inside the threshold. My feet were in the hall, but the rest of me knelt on the threadbare carpet I knew so well and I was holding my son, shushing him as he shook in my arms and his wet face pressed into my neck.

“It’s alright, Naruto, everything’s alright. I’m home, shhhh, everything’s going to be okay. I’m home now. I have you and I’m not leaving you again. It’s okay.” Over and over I repeated the refrain, as if it could brush aside all the hurt and fear that had mounted up while I had been gone. His body was trembling on mine and I rocked him slowly, tucking bits of his messy, yellow hair behind his ears, even while I buried my nose in that hair and just breathed him in. My Naruto. My son. “It’s okay. I promised, didn’t I? I said I would never leave you.”

“I know, Iruka-_sensei_,” he whined, small hands clinging to me. “But I thought— I thought you couldn’t come back, except for morning classes at the Academy!”

“I know, Naruto, I’m sorry, I—” Swallowing, I bit my lip and nuzzled deeper into his hair. “I know, Naruto,” I repeated. “The… the _Hokage-sama_… he still needs me to help him in the afternoon, after classes. But, we were talking about you, and he wants me to come home to you in the evening.” My arms tightened around him and a hand went to cradle the back of his head. “I’m going to come home every night, Naruto. I promise I am.”

“Iruka-_sensei_!” It was another wail and I just let him tangle my neck in a stranglehold and made little, hushing noises, while I held him. After all that had happened this day, I could have gotten lost in the moment, could have allowed myself to forget everything and simply dissolve into the feel of my son in my arms. But the more I held him, the more I reacquainted myself with the subtle nuances of him, of how his bones stood out under his skin, of how he smelled, and just the base _knowing_ of him, alive and real in my arms, the more I became acutely aware of the man standing out of sight, just outside my door.

Hatake Kakashi.

He had made no sound all the while I had comforted Naruto, but I could feel him there. Leaning against the flaking wall. His presence, so near and imposing, held the oppressive aura of heat radiating from some source I could not _see_ but ultimately did not need to see to _know_ it was there. My Lord of _Konoha_ was waiting. Quietly. Perhaps even patiently. But waiting. And the thought of him drew his image up before my mind’s eye, hands thrust in pockets, that odd, unnatural _sharingan_ hidden away behind cloth and steel, lean but powerful body angled forward over his bent knee, foot still planted on the wall. Part of me vulgarly wondered if he would have white, plaster flecks and smudges on the back of his pants, and I felt my face heat at the notion I was imaging his backside. But the thought was monetary, overcome by other considerations. How the dim, honeyed light might frost his hair and set it off, as if wrapped by a strange halo. How what could be seen of his face would be set in soft, thoughtful, yet disinterested lines beneath that gilded hair.

I had thought once that I did not want to think _he’s beautiful_ in any regard toward the man and I still did not want to, and yet… yet, the idea of the slow-settling dust swirling through the hall and clinging to his hair and clothes brought that unwanted thought to life, once again, and this and the other troubled thought his assumed patience might not _be patient_ at all, made me swallow again and slowly gather myself.

“Alright, Naruto. Alright,” I murmured, rocking him a bit more. “I’m here now, and I’m not going away again, and it’s time we got up and remembered our Will of Fire.”

“Because we’re _Konoha-nin_ and we have a strong Will of Fire, right, Iruka-_sensei_?”

The words tugged at me, and I brushed a hand across my eyes, removing the last of the clinging tears in my lashes and the heat of the blush clouding my cheeks, before I sniffled and stood shakily. Naruto stood with me, and I took his hand, while he fisted his own tears away. “That’s right, Naruto,” I said, squeezing the hand I held in mine. Then I breathed in heavily and looked down at him, into the caerulean eyes looking back up at me.

“Naruto…” I managed. “There’s… there’s someone I want you to meet.”

His forehead scrunched together, perhaps the uncertain tones in my voice alerting him to the fact this was more than a casual request. “Who, Iruka-_sensei_?” he queried, wearily, clutching tighter at my hand.

_Oh _kami_, oh hell, I don’t want to say this._

But I had no choice, really. Naruto needed me, and this was the only way the man whose bed my whole village thought I shared would allow me to be with him. I _had to_ follow through and hope Hatake Kakashi would do as he said he would. Had to cling onto the fact my new _Hokage_ had never lied to me.

So I held Naruto’s hand, gave it another little, reassuring squeeze, and did my best to let my next words come out naturally and easily. “Our _Hokage-sama_ wants to meet you, Naruto.”

“The… the _Hokage_?!” The exclamation was half squeak and half wail and before I could even react, he was dropping my hand, with a cry, and hiding behind my legs.

“Naruto!” I gasped, surprised and nearly thrown off balance by his unexpected and tight hold around my thighs.

“Why does he want to see me, Iruka-_sensei_?” he whined into my legs. “What did I do?”

He was almost on the verge of crying again, and it made something rise in my throat to choke me. “Oh Naruto,” I said, reaching around to put a hand on his head. “You didn’t do anything, Naruto. The… the _Hokage-sama_ and I… we just talked about you and he wants to meet you, Naruto. Everything’s alright.”

“I don’t want to, Iruka-_sensei_.” It was small and it was pleading and I had no doubt the man in the hall head heard it, despite the fact it had been said into the backs of my thighs in a distraught little voice.

“Naruto…” I murmured, oddly more pained by his fear than afraid of what my Lord of _Konoha_ would do. I could not force him to step out from behind my legs and let Hatake Kakashi see him, but all the same, if he didn’t… “Please, Naruto,” I asked. “He, the _Hokage-sama_, he’s been… kind to me, remember, Naruto?”

There was silence, both inside and out, and my heart thumped in my chest, wondering what would happen now. What the man I assumed owned me would think of that word. _Kind._ He _hadn’t_ been precisely _kind_, but he hadn’t exactly hurt me, either. Even this day… this day I had expected it.

A small hand crept to mine and grasped it, and mumbled words reached me from behind my legs. “Alright, Iruka-_sensei_.”

Relief and other things spread through me. Hope and fear and concern and so much else I couldn’t name, even as I used my son’s grip on my hand to guide him out from his hiding place. “He’s right outside, Naruto.”

My son’s other hand came up and gripped mine, so that he was clinging with both hands to one of mine, but he let me shuffle him to the door, let me guide him to the threshold, where we could both see the silver-haired man, waiting so intently and naturally, just as I’d left him. His hair gilt in the almost-gone light, just as I had imagined him.

And when I took that final, hobbled step into the in between separating what was my home from the outer world, his distant face changed and lightened and he came off the wall with an easy, rolling grace. Movements controlled and purposefully slow. Nonthreatening in every way possible, as he crossed the rough wood floor and bent, bracing his hand on his knees, to be at a level with Naruto’s line of sight. The one visible eye was bright with what anyone would take for a happy light and the skin around it crinkled. “Hello, Naruto,” he said, with this strange, mellow cast about his whole person. “I’m glad to finally meet you.”

_You’re… smiling…_

It was a drift of thought. There and gone from across my conscious, but I knew it was true. Hatake Kakashi was smiling at my child and he was being tender and soft, attempting not to frighten.

How many times had I wondered if this man was smiling, and been unsure? There had not been many instances, but of what few there had been, most had occurred when Sasuke was in the room. The man Itachi and his younger brother called their _shogun_ had always shown the most humanity and possible feeling when the younger Uchiha was present, and now he was doing the same again with Naruto. And this brought to mind the shift in him the moment I had near screamed and admitted under force I had a child. He had seemed… different. Distressed. At the time I had been too overwhelmed to even consider it, but… it was almost as though the man had been angry at the thought of my having a child. A child left alone because I was with him. And he had seemed angrier still when I had questioned what it was he wanted of my son.

The spasming grip on my ankle, the pain of it, and the notion that hand could break my bones with no effort, with only a careless reflex, returned to my mind and it turned my heart over. Did… was it possible my Lord _Hokage_ liked children? That he did not like seeing them hurt or in pain? Was… that… why… Had I gained this man’s attention _because_ I had saved Sai? _Because_ I had dared to protect a child, despite being afraid? Was it possible, he had _liked_ that?

I bit down on my lip, a streak of pain reminding me I had already bloodied it, and watched the man I was afraid of smiling at my son. I did not understand him at all, I knew it through and through, and yet… I… could not… help…

Whatever feeling it was rising in my throat to clog it and make me swallow uselessly, my child may have shared it, or something like it. His too thin body half turned and pressed back into my legs, his small hands tightening on mine, until the pressure they created was painful, recalling to my mind, tiny as he was, Naruto was strong. Very strong in some ways even he still did not understand and that he could not experiment with openly in _Akatsuki_ dominated _Konoha_. Especially not with the disparate eyes of the man bending over him on us both. “H-hello, _Ho-hokage-sama_,” he stammered and a few errant tears squeezed out of his eyes.

There was a little shift in the gray gaze taking in my son, as the lines of water rolled down Naruto’s whisker-marked cheeks. The lines around the one visible eyes relaxed a fraction and the Lord of _Konoha’s_ voice was pitched quiet and conversational when he spoke his next words. “Your Iruka-_sensei_ and I have only talked a little about you, Naruto, but I intend to see to it he’s here with you now that we have.”

No matter the fact it hurt, no matter how many times I had done so already, I could have whimpered and drawn fresh blood from my lip hearing Hatake Kakashi say this aloud to my child. If it were not for the reality of Naruto pressed up against me, I felt I would have doubled over with my hands over my mouth in effort to repress a half scream. But Naruto _was_ there with me and I needed to care for him, to be strong for him, and I did nothing but tremble and let him hold onto my hand. Nothing, until my son changed the dynamic of the moment.

Perhaps I should have expected it. Perhaps I could have curtailed the outburst, but maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d tried. My child was more than he appeared and he was strong and he had always had a difficult time holding back the truth of what he felt.

The tired and damp face under his wayward yellow hair crumbled up and bright, _angry_ tears built and flowed out of his crystal-blue eyes and when he spoke he near screamed into Hatake Kakashi's face. “What do you want with Iruka-_sensei_?!”

I jerked and a little sound of horror came out of me before I could stop or stifle it. “Naruto!” I moaned, my body shuddering indecisively, uncertain if I should shelter him or beg forgiveness from the man watching, even as part of my mind languidly agreed with the outburst. _Yes…_ that slow, pained part of me asked. _What _do _you want with me? Why won’t you tell me…_

Both my indecision and my thoughts appeared pointless, though. My Lord of _Konoha_ did not move or react. His face did not change from its quiet thoughtfulness, and when he addressed my son, his tone was still light and natural. “Your Iruka-_sensei_ has been helping me learn about _Konoha_. I might have decided to stay here, but I still have a lot to learn.”

A cry came out of Naruto and he let go of my hand with one of his, to allow himself the ability to throw an arm over his eyes and furiously scrub at the tears scudding down his face. “Iruka-sensei is teaching you about _Konoha_?”

The muffled inquiry deepened the smile lines around Hatake Kakashi’s eye, again. I thought if this had been his office and Naruto replaced with Sasuke, he would have ruffled the young one’s hair. As it was, he seemed to understand doing so would only upend the precarious balance of this moment between the two of them. My owner had somehow unerringly gone straight to the heart of Naruto’s instinctual need to help others who were in need and used it to his own advantage effortlessly, but Naruto was in essence only an upset child who was trying to grasp why the man in front of him had taken away his only family. A wrong move could throw all of this to the wind, but my _Hokage_ navigated the rough waters as though he were used to upset children.

And how was that possible? How could it be so easy for him to slip to one knee and say so reassuringly, “Yes, he is, Naruto. I need to learn more about _Konoha_, so I can be a better _Hokage_. The kind your village needs.” Slowly, as if knowing too fast of a movement would scare him away, as if my son were some small, frightened and injured animal, the silver-haired man held out his hand to my still sniffing child. “Is it alright if he teaches me, Naruto?”

Naruto’s lip trembled, and he still held one fist to his eye, forgetting he was using it to wipe his tears away. But, equally slowly, almost matching Hatake Kakashi’s non-threatening motions, his other hand let go of mine and reached back for the _Hokage_. Solemnly, my son nodded his head up and down and my owner took his hand and shook it softly, the crinkles at the side of his eyes showing another smile.

_Oh _kami_, oh hell_, my mind said, watching this strange tableau play out. And then it was over and Naruto was letting go of our visitor’s hand and throwing himself at me, whining out my name. “Iruka-_sensei_!”

“Alright, Naruto,” I said, huskily, clearing my throat. “Alright. Let’s go inside. We’re…” _We’re what, Iruka?_ A rude voice chided. _Just what are _we_ going to do now?_ “We’re going to make the _Hokage_ dinner.”

I said the last, flicking my glance to the man in question. He rose from his knees in one fluid move and the bland, uncompromising disinterest that had reclaimed his face made me want to whimper. His single eye was hard and he gave a curt nod of assent at what I’d said, but the coolness of him suddenly gave nothing else away. Looking at that face, I knew I had gone back to being Umino Iruka and Iruka-_sensei_ had disappeared from his mind, if ever the man had thought of me as anything but his property at all. I was just his _pet_, and it wouldn’t do to forget it, even if he had played _kind_ to my son.

I supposed, turning Naruto with gentle hands and shepherding him into our home, I should be grateful the man had heard what I’d called him and had played along. Perhaps now Naruto would not be so afraid when I had to leave him for the Tower…

The thought and the sadness settling over me broke and scattered, as I at last raised my eyes and took in the state of the room I had entered. It was gray, was my first impression. The blinds were drawn and so little evening sun filtered in and no lights burned to dispel the gloom. But it was also musty, as if those blinds had not been pulled open in all the time I had been gone.

And in that gray, almost shadow-light, things were scattered and strewn and stacked haphazardly. An orange jacket, color bled out in the dimness, hung precariously over the back of the couch, the sleeve swaying in the shallow air currents coming in the door. The blankets I typically kept draped over the place the jacket hung were bunched and balled and wound into a strange and heartrending nest with Naruto’s pillows, to one end of that piece of my limited furnishings. The small _kotatsu_ facing the couch was littered with half empty mugs of tea and other, unidentifiable dishes. Simply, it seemed, because my son had huddled beneath the blankets, which were scented of us both, and had not bothered to move the clutter to the kitchen, which was tucked away in a corner of the single room.

Not that moving the dishes would have mattered, over all. Sandals and discarded bits of clothing sat here and there in little, forlorn mounds with things I couldn’t identify in the near-gone light. I took a step forward and stumbled on something I could not see, yet whatever it might be, tangled my legs and pulled me up short, alongside the understanding this was how my son had lived without me. The sight causing a new ache to bloom in my heart, like blood spreading on cloth covering a wound.

It was this ache, more than disappointment that pulled words from me. “Oh, Naruto,” I breathed out. “What happened?”

“I’m sorry, Iruka-_sensei_!” This was tearful and when I looked down, brilliant points of water stood out in his eyes. “I tried to keep everything the way you liked it, but I was so tired after going to the Academy and I just really wanted to try hard on my homework, in case you came back, but it’s so hard, Iruka-_sensei_, and I didn’t want to disappoint you, ya know? I’m sorry!”

“Oh, Naruto.” I hugged him tight and fast and brushed the gathering tears off his face. “You did fine, Naruto, just fine. Don’t worry about any of it. I’m home and we’ll clean everything up together, alright? For now, let’s see about making dinner. Will you help me, Naruto?”

“Alright, Iruka-_sensei_,” he said, sniffing back further, unshed tears and darting ahead of me to both cover the fact and to switch on lights.

The yellow glow made everything appear better and worse at once, and I paced in, biting my lip and turning my head this way and that, to take it all in. The man who I presumed owned me followed, and his emotionless glance seemed to miss nothing, even as it grazed over me and then this space that was all I had. He stood just a moment, single, gray eye sweeping everything, then he sauntered off, navigating the wreck to the light, half open curtains I had hung around the bed Naruto and I cuddled in at night. His moments were easy and boredom may as well have leaked from him.

_What… are you thinking?_ I wondered, as he twitched back a curtain and looked inside. _Do you still like what you see? Is the view still beautiful, now?_

_What the hell, Iruka?_ _Just what the hell are you thinking?_ was my next thought, and I turned away, going with Naruto toward the kitchen and leaving the Lord of _Konoha_ to his own devices. It should not have mattered what he thought of my home or of me because of what he saw. It should not…

Let him look. Let him see it all and think what he wanted. It _didn’t_ matter…

I told myself so, as my feet encountered the tile, marking the beginning of the tiny kitchen area, but there was still an unusual pain in my chest, and I rubbed at it, looking around. There were more dishes on the table and in the sink and I wondered what I would find in the refrigerator and cupboards fit to eat.

“Naruto,” I asked, picking up the litter from off the table and settling it in a tilting stack next to the detritus in the sink, “have you been shopping since I went to help the _Hokage_?” There was a carton of spoiled milk in my hand and I swallowed and set it down.

“Yes, Iruka-_sensei_,” he said with a frown that creased his forehead. “Daikoku-_sensei_ gave me money to buy things and he brought food one day.”

“That’s good, Naruto,” I said, a spark of thankfulness Daikoku had actually done as I asked of him in that last, desperate moment before Itachi had propelled me from my mentor’s office glowing and fading in me. At least my son had eaten and someone had checked to be sure he was alive.

This thought clouding my mind, I opened a cupboard and blinked at the contents. Instant ramen crowed the space, the packages stacked at odd angles. Naruto squirmed at my confusion and hastily opened the refrigerator door.

“There’s more than just noodles, Iruka-_sensei_, honest. There’s some eggs and vegetables, too.”

I peeked into the cool interior of the refrigerator over his shoulder and noted three lonely eggs, some leaks, and an eggplant sitting large and bruised-purple in the otherwise empty space. Naruto was frowning again, looking dubiously at the purple vegetable, but a wistful thought was spreading through my mind. The raven-hair and unflappable Itachi pacing gracefully into his lord’s office and, as Hatake Kakashi had put it, _mothering_ him into eating. Itachi with his red eyes and black-painted nails setting down a covered tray and presenting my owner with eggplant the way he had presented me with sweets, to try and get me to eat.

Was it possible the Lord of _Konoha_ liked eggplant? Could Itachi have been offering him a favored food in the hope he would eat?

_He’s so thin…_

I cleared my throat, attempting to rid myself of the thought of his body, so close to mine on his couch, and reached to take the ingredients from the refrigerator. “We’ll make ramen, Naruto.”

“Ramen!” he enthused, happy smile bringing out the whisker marks on his cheeks.

I tried to return it, but the man occupying my thoughts had somehow appeared in the kitchen. He sat at the table with his chin resting in his hand, as it so often did when he sat behind his desk. When he had gotten there and how long he’d been there impossible to determine. Languid ennui almost emanated from him, but cool appraisal burned in the one eye he allowed to be seen.

Flushing for no reason at all, I turned with Naruto to the sink. We would need to care for the dishes before we could cook. There just weren’t any clean kettles or pots of bowls or room to work with until that was done. But Naruto had never been one to avoid working with me and he dragged over a chair and pulled a towel from a drawer and started wiping dry the dishes I washed and putting them away. If he was quieter than usual and cast cautious glances at the silent man behind us, who could blame him? There was a part of me that wished I could do the same.

_What… are you thinking?_ that part of me asked. _Oh _kami_, oh hell, please don’t be angry…_

Why he should be upset I didn’t even know. I only understood wrath didn’t always need a reason. I’d seen enough of unreasonable wrath to know it.

But I couldn’t just throw nervous glances back over my shoulder. I had things to do and Naruto depending on me. So, I offered him a small smile and picked at a point of conversation that might distract him. “You’ve really been working hard at your homework, Naruto?”

“Yes, Iruka-_sensei_,” he said, looking up from the lower cupboard he’d left the chair to replace a kettle in. “I wanted to make you proud of me, but I didn’t do very well. All of the work is so hard.” His bottom lip trembled and he worried it with his teeth, the towel in his hand hanging limp and forgotten.

“I am proud, Naruto,” I assured. “You’re going to be a great _shinobi_ one day.”

“Like my dad!” he chirped, face breaking into a real smile I felt myself returning, unconsciously.

“That’s right, Naruto. Like your father.” It was a natural thing, a reflective statement so often repeated between us I did not even think of the man at the table or how I had tucked Naruto’s distinctive yellow hair under knit caps and hoods for so many days, hoping no one would notice or question. Did not think. Not until Hatake Kakashi’s droll voice drawled out, “Father?” just behind me.

I stifled a whining sound in my throat, and spun. The countertop met my hips and my dishwater-wet hands found the counter edge in a death grip that turned my knuckles white. He was so silent and his movements so startling fast, when he wanted them to be, and the man who had broken _Konoha_ without a fight was simply _there_. Hands in pockets, lazy slouch belying the single line of warning _chakra_ caressing my neck, and the dull, gray eye assessing my rising pulse and the color leaking from my cheeks.

_Lying is unwholesome…_

I could almost hear the refrain playing in my mind, but all was a blur, lost between gratitude he was holding himself back from full _threat_ in front of my child, and horror at what he would do. If any of his fained ease and restraint would matter when he knew the truth.

“Please…” I pleaded, too low for Naruto to hear, too low for me to hear, my lips numb and pale.

The man who I belonged to, one way or another, ignored my plea, seemingly brushing it off with a cheerful and friendly eye-smile he turned on my son. “Who was your father, Naruto?”

My young one was frowning and looking between us, uncertain of what was happening, but at least not sensing danger. Only insecurity. But I had taught him well and he dropped his head and toed the tiles beneath our feet. “He wasn’t anybody, _Hokage-sama_,” he muttered. “Just a _shinobi_ of the Leaf.”

The friendliness on the Lord of _Konoha’s_ face didn’t change and he went on with that hidden smile, but that line of _chakra_ slithered around my neck and constricted, making me squeeze my eyes tight closed and bite my lip against a wave of pain. I could breathe, not well, not _easily_, but I _could_, yet pain was radiating out from where his life energy touched me, as if it were wrapped around me in just such a way it could crush all the delicate bones in my throat, if he weren’t careful. If he _wanted_ to.

“Oh? Is that so, Iruka-_sensei_?” The question was a slow drawl, a bored inquiry, but I could feel the undertones in the pain spreading down my neck and the throbbing refrain pulsing through me on my heartbeat. _Lying is unwholesome…_

_Lying... is unwholesome._

_Lying is—_

Not an option. As much as I needed to defend my son, I could not lie. Some internal part of me recognized it was better to tell the truth and beg, than to risk the ire of this man through a lie.

“His father was the Yellow Flash. Please.”

I was almost crying, but the restraint on my neck kept me from sobbing and kept my words low and husky. I doubted Naruto would have been able to hear them, but they drew my Lord of _Konoha’s_ attention.

And why shouldn’t they? The man considering me with one gray eye and one spinning _sharingan_, hidden away behind his _Hitai-ate_, had ruthlessly slaughtered the best _shinobi_ of every village he’d fought against and taken. He’d challenged and killed the heroes of every village. All… except Minato Namikaze. They’d clashed on the battlefield numerous times, but the Yellow Flash of the Leaf had always survived their fights, only to die in a pointless accident in the village Hidden By Leaves itself. In the first days after _Konoha’s_ fall to the _Akatsuki_, as much as men muttered the new Lord of the Leaf kept Tsunade alive to marry her, they also murmured the Land of Fire would never have fallen if the Yellow Flash had been there to defend it.

My Naruto was the son of the only _shinobi_ to ever defy my owner in combat and in death, as well. Escaping out of his rival’s hands by some twist of fate that many speculated had left the man studying me feeling cheated.

“Please,” I whispered again, dizziness from lack of air and the images floating through my mind making it hard to think. What would he do? What—

The line of _chakra_ around my neck released and slipped away and boredom seemed to override his face, once more. The Lord of _Konoha_, the Head of the _Akatsuki_, raised a shoulder and let it fall in a dismissive, lazy shrug, and he leaned into me to say low, near my face, “He isn’t the Yellow Flash. And neither are you, Umino Iruka.”

And then he was walking away from me, to slip back into his seat and drop his head into his hand, to watch me dolefully.

I felt my hands slide on the wet counter and a weakness and limpness spread through me, his words repeating on a loop in my head. _He isn’t the Yellow Flash. And neither are you, Umino Iruka._

_You… don’t care?_ part of me asked. _You don’t care who my son’s father is? You won’t… take your anger out on him?_

Naruto was watching me with a frown and I pulled my lips into a weak smile for him, turned back to the sink, saying, “Come on, Naruto. Let’s finish.”

My son climbed back onto the chair beside me and we finished the dishes and moved on to preparing the ramen, while thoughts swirled through me. No… If Hatake Kakashi had wanted to harm Naruto, he would have. He did not care who my child’s father had been, and because I had not lied, he was not angry. If I had lied… I didn’t doubt there would have been pain as a result. Perhaps not in the moment, in front of Naruto, but I would have regretted it. Because I had told the truth…

I set a bowl full of instant ramen, dressed up with leaks and eggplant and an egg before the man who owned me and sat with my own bowl beside me, my chopsticks swirling through the bowl’s contents aimlessly. Because I’d told the truth, Naruto was grinning over his ramen and chattering about Ichiraku Ramen, almost as if this were a normal night. A normal meal. I had earned us a reprieve and maybe I should be grateful.

In a small way, I was grateful, especially when I heard Naruto ask, “Have you tried Ichiraku Ramen, _Hokage-sama_?” in a half shy, but truly inquisitive tone.

My silver-haired keeper answered in the negative with, “No, Naruto, I haven’t,” and I looked up with a pained, half-cracked smile. Only to have it slip away, as I realized I was seeing Hatake Kakashi without his mask. He was sitting there with his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand, the skin around his visible eye crinkled, while he smiled at my chattering son, and it sent a spike through my heart.

_He’s beautiful…_

In so many ways, I should not have felt that way, I couldn’t deny it, and all I could do was drop my head and struggle to eat.

Naruto, and to my surprise, my _Hokage_, finished their meals, and Naruto helped me stack the bowls in the sink. Then my son was yawning and sleepily meandering to my couch, muttering about homework, and the man who I felt owned me was motioning me to the door with him.

We stepped into the hall together and before I could react, my _Hokage_ had me up against the wall, his gray eye intent on me, though he touched me on where else and held me there only with that force of that gaze. “You will be at the Tower to meet Sasuke in the morning, Umino Iruka.”

“Yes, _Hokage-sama_,” I assented, and stood there, breathing, expecting more.

But the man stepped back with a lazy humming sound and paced away with one hand in his pocket and the other raised in an idle wave. “I will see you in the afternoon, Umino Iruka,” he said, and was gone.

And there was nothing for me to do but step away from the wall and go back to Naruto. He was yawning over a textbook propped on his knees, his small body twined in the nest of blankets he’d created while I was gone. My heart twisted and I gently closed the book, then reached for him. “Come on, Naruto,” I said, picking him up with little effort. “Let’s get some sleep. We can worry about homework and cleaning tomorrow.”

“Wanna make you proud, Iruka-_sensei_,” he sleepy-moaned into my ear, his arms languidly wrapping around my neck.

I found myself nuzzling into his hair before we ever got to the bed and we curled together, his head under my chin and his fists balled in my shirt. My poor young one was asleep almost instantly, hardly realizing how tired he truly was, leaving me to cry softly in the dark. Cry because I had survived the day.

And I was home.

**Author's Note:**

> This salty ball of angst and glitter is an original fiction author and fan fiction junkie, who literally lives for comments and reader interaction. Even if this is nothing but inarticulate vowel screams. I exist on a flotilla of social media, and though I rarely post anything on said social media, I'm always up for a chat.
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